Princeton (11-12, 3-5 Ivy) at Cornell (9-12, 3-5 Ivy)
February 16, 2018 • 8:00 pm
Ivy League Network (Barry Leonard, Eric Taylor '06)
Ithaca, N.Y. • Newman Arena (4,473)
QUICK HITS
 • The Cornell men's basketball team used a road split last weekend to stay in the mix for a bid to the Ivy League Tournament, but the stakes get even higher when defending conference champion Princeton visits Newman Arena on Friday, Feb. 16 at 8 p.m.
• The contest will be broadcast live on the Ivy League Network with Barry Leonard Eric Taylor '06 on the call.
• The Big Red and the Tigers, the winner of last season's inaugural Ivy League Tournament, are tied for fifth place in the conference standings at 3-5.
• The game will be the second of a doubleheader that will also feature the Big Red vs. the Princeton women at 6 p.m.
 • A win for Cornell would snap a six-game skid against the Tigers, avenge a 91-54 loss to the Tigers in January and match last season's conference win total when the team went 4-10.
•
Matt Morgan, the eighth-leading scorer in the country (22.8 ppg.), has now reached double figures in scoring in a school-record 44 consecutive games after scoring 13 points against Yale.
• Morgan has been on a tear all season, averaging 22.8 points, 4.4 rebounds and 3.3 assists this year.
• Morgan enters Friday's game six points shy of becoming the third Cornellian to reach 1,500 career points — and would do so in 77 games, 15 games fewer than Ryan Wittman '10, the school's all-time leading scorer.
• He's also 22 points shy of becoming the first Cornell player to post three 500-point seasons (only nine in school history to date).
• After missing much of the preseason due to injury, junior
Stone Gettings is averaging 17.1 ppg., 6.7 rpg. and 2.6 apg. in just 25.6 minutes per contest.
• He enters the week with five consecutive 20-point games and is averaging 24.0 points, 8.0 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game over that span.
• Included was a career-high 39 points at Delaware - the third-most points ever by a Cornell player and the sixth-most by any Division I player in a game this year - and 17 rebounds at Penn, the most by a Cornell player since 2009-10.
• Cornell brought a 6-7 non-conference record into the 62nd season of Ivy play after starting off the 2018 calendar year on the right note by snapping a three-game losing skid with a 93-69 win over Central Penn on Friday, Jan. 5.
• The six non-league wins were a two-game improvement over last season (4-11) for second-year head coach
Brian Earl.
• The Big Red also features Steven Julian, who ranks second in the Ancient Eight in blocked shots (1.4 bpg.), sixth in rebounding (6.0 rpg.) and 10th in steals (1.1 spg.).
• The junior college transfer has 10 points in each of his last two games after having just one double figure scoring game in his first 19 contests.
• Junior
Joel Davis has started the last five games (3-2), averaging 6.6 points, 4.0 rebounds, 1.8 steals, 1.6 assists and 0.8 blocks per game over that span.
• Junior guard
Jack Gordon, a career 41 percent 3-point shooter, is averaging a career-high 6.1 points per game.
• Freshman Terrance McBride sports a 2.5:1 assist:turnover ratio, a mark that would be a single-season school record if maintained (current record, 2.28 by Derek Williams in 1984-85).
• Cornell continues to play without starting guard
Wil Bathurst (7.1 ppg., 3.6 rpg., 3.1 apg. in seven starts this season) and forward
Troy Whiteside (6.6 ppg., 3.1 rpg., 1.4 apg. in 2016-17) and dressed just 11 healthy players its first five weekends of conference play.
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HEAD COACH BRIAN EARL
• Brian Earl is in his second season as the Robert E. Gallagher '44 Head Coach of Cornell Men's Basketball (17-33, .340; 7-15 Ivy, .318).
• He became Cornell's 22nd head coach in April of 2016.
• Earl helped his alma mater, Princeton, return to national prominence during nine seasons as an assistant and associate head coach.
• The Tigers had posted a 143-69 overall record and a 72-26 record in Ancient Eight games since 2009-10, never finishing lower than third place and winning 20 or more games five times.
• His Ivy League peers voted him as the league's top assistant coach in a November 2010 FoxSports.com poll, earning the recognition prior to a 2011 season in which Princeton won the Ivy League title and returned to the NCAA Tournament.
CORNELL-PRINCETON SERIES
Overall: Princeton leads 147-80
In Ithaca, N.Y.: Princeton leads 60-50
Current Streak: Princeton, 6 games
Last Meeting: Princeton won 91-54, 1/13/18 in Princeton, N.J.
Earl vs. Princeton: 0-3
Series Notes: Series dates back to the 1901-02 season • the two teams have nearly split the meetings down the middle over the last 14 seasons (Princeton leads 14-13) • the Tigers have the better of the recent meetings, claiming six straight victories and 13 of the last 15 after the Big Red had gone 7-1 in the previous eight matchups
A WIN OVER PRINCETON WOULD
 • push Cornell's record to 10-12 on the season, including 4-5 in Ivy play (matching last season's league win total when it went 4-10).
• keep the Big Red within a game of the top four in the conference standings.
• make the Big Red 4-2 in its last six conference games.
• snap a six-game losing streak against the Tigers and give
Brian Earl his first win against his alma mater (0-3).
• make Cornell 8-6 over Princeton in Ithaca dating back to the 2005 season after winning just three games in the prior 14 campaigns.
• be the 1,252nd in program history (1,251-1,420 in 118 seasons, .468).
LAST TIME VS. PRINCETON
• Princeton scored the game's first 19 points and never let up, topping Cornell 91-54 on Jan. 13 at Jadwin Gymnasium.
• Junior
Matt Morgan had 16 points and seven rebounds to lead the Big Red, while freshman Terrance McBride chipped in a career-high 11 points to go along with two rebounds and two assists.
•
Joel Davis scored eight points and
Stone Gettings scored six with five rebounds.
• Cornell shot 36 percent from the floor overall, 28 percent in the decisive first half, and connected on just 7-of-27 from beyond the 3-point arc.
• The Tigers got 20 points from Devin Canady to lead three double figure scorers.
• Jerome Desrosiers scored 14 off the bench, including hitting 4-of-5 3-pointers.
LAST TIME OUT
• Cornell couldn't overcome a slow start, clawing its way back into the game several times after facing double digit deficits, but Yale ultimately held off the Big Red 74-65 on Feb. 10 at Newman Arena.
• Junior
Stone Gettings led four double figure scorers with 20 points and eight rebounds, while classmate
Matt Morgan added 13 points and seven rebounds.
• Both Steven Julian and Terrance McBride scored 10 points apiece, with Julian adding three steals and three rebounds and McBride tallying four rebounds and two assists without a turnover.
• The Big Red held a 37-34 edge on the backboards, with seven of the rebounds being credited to
Joel Davis.
• Davis added eight points, two blocks and a steal in the loss.
• Miye Oni had 19 points, six rebounds and six assists in the win for a Yale team that had 21 assists as a team and made 11 3-pointers.
• Azar Swain had 11 points off the bench and both Paul Atkinson and Trey Phills had 10 points apiece.
• The Bulldogs' bench outscored Cornell's reserves 25-4.
PLAYER NOTES TO KNOW
 • After having teammates score 30 points in the same game just once in the first 119 years of Cornell basketball, juniors
Matt Morgan and
Stone Gettings reached that milestone in consecutive games against Niagara and Delaware.
• Prior to the Niagara contest, the only previous time two Cornellians scored more than 30 points in the same game was on March 2, 1956 at the famed Palestra in Philadelphia when Bo Roberson (32) and Chuck Rolles (30) did so against Penn.
• In between, Cornell played 1,611 games over those ensuing 61 seasons.
• Morgan, the nation's eighth-leading scorer, has been on a tear all season, averaging 22.8 points, 4.4 rebounds and 3.3 assists this year, including claiming Ivy League Player of the Week honors three times.
• Morgan has reached double figures in 44 consecutive games, the sixth-longest active streak by a Division I player in the country entering the week.
• The 44 consecutive double figure scoring games surpassed John Sheehy's 34 straight (1953-55) for a school record that had held for 62 years.
• He is the only player in school history to put together two streaks of at least 20 consecutive games scoring in double figures (also a 21-game streak from 2015-16).
• Now averaging 22.8 points per game, Morgan's scoring average would be the second-highest ever by a Cornell player if maintained (Chuck Rolles '56 averaged 23.0 points in 1955-56).
• Morgan was the first Big Red player to post 12 consecutive 20-point games (previous Cornell record was six), a streak that ended with 13 at Penn.
• The junior had his streak of 30 consecutive games with a made 3-pointer snapped at Yale (third-longest streak at Cornell).
• Morgan became the first Cornell player to declare early for the NBA Draft during the spring of 2017, withdrawing before the early entry deadline to preserve his final two seasons of eligibility.
• After missing much of the preseason due to injury, junior
Stone Gettings is averaging 17.1 ppg., 6.7 rpg. and 2.6 apg. in 25.6 minutes per contest.
• The only games by a Cornellian with more than Gettings' 39 points against Delaware were 47 scored by George Farley against Princeton in 1960 and 42 by Chuck Rolles at Syracuse in 1956.
• In his last 18 games, spanning 482 minutes, Gettings has scored 329 points, grabbed 125 rebounds, dished 54 assists and collected 14 steals and eight blocks — 27.3 ppg., 10.4 rpg., 4.5 apg. per 40 minutes.
• Gettings has five straight 20-point games, one shy of the school record of six entering the season — that was broken and extended to 12 by Morgan earlier this year.
• Junior forward Steven Julian is second in the Ancient Eight in blocked shots (1.4 bpg.), sixth in rebounding (6.0 rpg.) and is 10th in steals (1.1 spg.).
•
Jack Gordon, a career 41 percent 3-point shooter, tied a single-game school record for 3-point percentage in a game, joining Ryan Wittman '10 (2010 vs. Bryant) as the lone Cornellians to hit five 3-pointers in a game without a miss when he did so against Central Penn.
• Gordon's career-best 10 rebounds against Niagara obliterated his previous career best of four.
• With Gordon and Gettings each registering double digit rebounds vs. Niagara, the juniors became the first Big Red teammates to accomplish that feat since Louis Dale '10 (11) and Jeff Foote '10 (10) did so against Dartmouth during the 2007-08 campaign.
• Eleven different Big Red players to have reached double digits in scoring in at least one game this season.
• Members of the Cornell basketball team represent 10 states and the District of Columbia.
TEAM NOTES TO KNOW
 • The Big Red's streak of scoring 75 or more points ended after six games with 61 points against Penn, its longest stretch since stringing together six consecutive contests spanning the final three contests of 2006-07 and the first three of the 2007-08 seasons. (Last time with seven straight, 1/19/66-2/18/66).
•
Brian Earl and his brother Dan (VMI) one of five active sets of brothers directing Division I programs, joining Scott (Baylor) and Bryce (Vanderbilt) Drew; Bobby (Arizona State) and Danny (Rhode Island) Hurley; Joe (Yale) and James (Boston University) Jones; and Sean (Arizona) and Archie (Dayton) Miller.
• Fifth-year assistant coach Jon Jaques was a starter and senior captain on the 2009-10 Cornell team that advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16.
• Cornell has played in 47 different states, as well as in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Australia, France and Spain. The only states the Big Red has not played in are Alaska, North Dakota and Mississippi after crossing Wyoming off the list last year.
• Cornell has hit a 3-pointer in 822 consecutive games (11th-longest streak in Division I) dating back to a contest against Denison in the 1988-89 season opener (0-for-2). Since the 3-point shot came into effect in NCAA play during the 1986-87 season, the Big Red has hit at least one shot behind the arc in 868 of 872 games (5,623 3-pointers over that span).
• The Big Red returns 72 percent of its scoring, 74 percent of its rebounding and 71 percent of its assists from last season — one of just 16 Division I teams nationwide to bring back 70 percent of its scoring, rebounding and assists from 2016-17.
• Dating back to the first overtime game against Penn way back in 1922, Cornell is 40-50 in games that go an extra period. Cornell is 6-9 in multiple overtime games, with the longest game for the Big Red being a five overtime contest against Princeton, won by the Tigers 66-61 on Feb. 24, 1979 at Barton Hall. Cornell is 29-19 in home overtime games, 2-2 in neutral contests and 10-28 in road games.
• The Big Red ranks among the best according to the annual NCAA Division I Academic Progress Report (APR) for 2015-16 that was released this past May. The APR measures semester-by-semester records for every individual team in Division I with regard to each team members' continuing eligibility, retention and progress toward graduation. The NCAA "commends" teams that have APR scores in the top 10 percent within their sport. Cornell has been recognized nine times in the 12 years since the APR began, including seven consecutive.
• Are Cornell Student-Athletes on Scholarship? The easy answer is no. Cornell student-athletes are awarded need-based financial aid, just as any other student who applies to the school. That package can come in the form of student loans and grants. The basic intent of the original Ivy League agreement of 1954 was to improve and foster intercollegiate athletics while keeping the emphasis on such competition in harmony with the educational purpose of the institutions. The Ivy League is nationally recognized for its level of success — absent of athletic scholarships — while rigorously maintaining its self-imposed high academic standards. The Ivy League has demonstrated a rare willingness and ability, given the current national pressures on intercollegiate success, to abide by these rules and still compete successfully in Division I athletics.
#ROADTOIVYMADNESS RETURNS
• The Ivy League men's and women's basketball tournaments return to Philadelphia, where they will take place Saturday and Sunday, March 10-11, 2018.
• The top four teams will earn berths to the tournament, with the semifinals on Saturday and the championships on Sunday.
• All six games will be broadcast live on ESPN's networks.
• For tickets and more information please visit IvyMadness.com.
NEXT UP
• The Big Red will welcome first-place Penn to Newman Arena on Saturday, Feb. 17 at 6:30 p.m.
• Cornell will look for a season split against the Quakers and head coach Steve Donahue, who led the Big Red program for 10 seasons (2000-10), winning three Ivy titles and making a Sweet 16 appearance with the Big Red.
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