HANOVER, N.H. – They waited not so patiently in their locker room at Leede Arena 10 minutes after closing its regular season with an 86-75 win over Dartmouth. They were rewarded minutes later, celebrating when Princeton's final errant shot missed to give Yale a 94-90 overtime win and the Big Red a berth in the Ivy League Men's Basketball Tournament for the first time.
Cornell's win, coupled with Columbia's loss at Harvard and Princeton's defeat at Yale, propelled the Big Red into the fourth and final spot where it will face Ivy co-champ Harvard at the Palestra in Philadelphia on Saturday, March 10 at 12:30 p.m. on ESPNU.
The Big Red shot .633 from the floor, the eighth-highest single-game percentage in school history, and used a well-balanced offensive attack with five players in double-digits.
Matt Morgan and
Jack Gordon paced the Big Red with 16 points apiece, with Morgan extending his double-digit streak to 50 consecutive games. He also became the school's single-season scoring king with 611 points, surpassing Ryan Wittman (596 points in 2009-10) and becoming the 22nd Ivy League player to score 600 points in a season. Steven Julian (11), Josh Warren (11) and Stone Getting (10) were also in double-figures, with Gettings pulling down a team-high six rebounds and adding five assists.
Miles Wright scored 19 points in his final collegiate game for Dartmouth, while Taylor Johnson had 16 points on Senior Night. The Big Green shot 50 percent from the floor, but couldn't overcome a second half deficit of 16 points with eight minutes to play.
After a high-scoring, back-and-forth first five minutes of the game, Cornell went on an 11-1 run to build its lead to double digits less than three minutes later. Warren had five quick points during the run and Jake Kuhn, who came off the bench to score eight big points, found Steven Julian for a dunk. Dartmouth chipped away, getting within one (33-32) on a steal and layup by Wright with six minutes to play in the half, but the Big Red hit three consecutive 3-pointers, two by Gordon sandwiched around a Morgan trey. The lead stood at six by the break (48-42).
Cornell saw the lead dip below five for just 13 seconds in the second half, that coming after Dartmouth hit the first basket of the stanza. The Big Red answered with a 7-0 run, and when the lead went back to five, Cornell answered with eight straight points - 3-pointers by Kuhn and Gordon and a reverse layup by senior Kyle Brown. Both Brown (six points) and classmate Jordan Abdur-Ra'oof (two points, assist, steal) gave a tired Cornell team a lift after playing double overtime the night before at Harvard. The tired legs didn't stop the Big Red offense, which connected on 68 percent of its shots in the second half (13-of-19). The lead grew to as many as 16 and the visitors were never seriously threatened down the stretch as word about the other games started circulating through the crowd.
NOTES TO KNOW
• Matt Morgan not only surpassed 600 points on the season, but also hit the 200 assist mark for his career.
• Jack Gordon's 16 points set a new career high (15) and marked the first time he's ever led the team in scoring.
• Josh Warren ended his Ivy season a perfect 12-of-12 from the free-throw line.
• The Big Red has now scored 2,069 points on the season, the fifth-highest total in school history.
NEXT UP
• Cornell will play in its first-ever Ivy League Men's Basketball Tournament when it meets top-seeded Harvard on Saturday, March 10 at 1230 p.m. on ESPNU.
• The Crimson, who tied Penn as the regular season champions, earned a season sweep with a 76-73 win in Ithaca on Feb. 16 and a 98-88 double overtime triumph on March 2.
