PLAYER NOTES TO KNOW
• No Big Red player has recorded more than 30 minutes of playing time this season, with senior captain Kobe Dickson’s 29:53 against Binghamton being the high-water mark.
• Dickson became the first player in school history to record nine assists and nine rebounds in the same game when he did so vs. Coppin State.
• Junior Greg Dolan has registered career highs in assists (eight at Canisius) and rebounding (eight vs. Coppin State) over his last three contests and now sports a 3.22 assist:turnover ratio (29:9) for the season, a mark that is 29th-best in the country.
• At Canisius, where his father Michael is a Professor and Co-Director of Sports and Exercise Health Care and his sister is a member of the women’s basketball team, Dolan became the first Cornell player with at least eight assists and zero turnovers in a game since Chris Wroblewski had 10 assists and no miscues on Feb. 10, 2012 in an 85-84 overtime win over Yale.
• Over his last three contests, Dolan has 18 assists and just three turnovers while making 10-of-12 shots from the floor (83 percent).
• Senior Sarju Patel sat out the 2019-20 season as a transfer and 2020-21 due to the pandemic after averaging 10.2 points, 3.6 rebounds, 1.2 assists and 0.9 steals per game at VMI under former Penn State star, Dan Earl.
• Patel’s 3-pointer with 13 seconds left at Lafayette was his first in a collegiate game since March 9, 2019 when he went 1-of-3 against No. 22 Wofford in the Southern Conference Tournament.
• He has been in double figures in five consecutive games.
• Junior Jordan Jones’ father Max played in the NFL (Buffalo Bills) and the USFL (Birmingham Stallions), while his uncle Sean Jones played in the NFL with the Los Angeles Raiders, Houston Oilers and Green Bay Packers, winning a Super Bowl title in 1997 with the Packers and twice capturing All-Pro honors.
• Jones has already surpassed his freshman season scoring total (102) with his 112 points while playing six fewer games and 118 fewer minutes than in 2019-20.
• Sophomore Chris Manon’s 17 points are the most by a Big Red player making his collegiate debut since Matt Morgan had 20 points against Georgia Tech to open 2015-16, while his seven rebounds are the most since Chris Vandenberg had seven at Canisius to begin the 2001-02 campaign.
• After starting out his career 0-for-3 from 3-point range, sophomore Keller Boothby has made 25-of-41 treys over his last eight games (.610).
• Sophomore Sean Hansen had 11 rebounds in just 12 minutes of action against Wells, the Big Red’s first double figure rebounding game off the bench since Errick Peck corralled 10 vs. Longwood on Nov. 24, 2012.
• Freshman Nazir Williams is shooting .651 from the floor (28-of-43), including .778 from inside the arc (21-of-27), well ahead of the single-season school record of
• Senior Dean Noll helped guide Shawnee HS (N.J.), the alma mater of Cornell head coach Brian Earl, to a state title as a senior, earning MVP honors for the championship game. He broke the school’s single-season scoring record with 737 points - besting the previous mark of 675 set by Dan Earl, Brian’s older brother.
• Noll is averaging 11.5 points and 3.0 assists over the last two games.
• He has 16 assists and three turnovers over his last five contests.
• Freshman Guy Ragland Jr. had 17 points and 12 rebounds off the bench against Keuka in 17 minutes of action, the second fewest minutes played for a Big Red player with a double-double (John McCord vs. Haverford, 21 points, 10 rebounds in 15 minutes on Dec. 2, 1996) and the first by a reserve since 2012 (Errick Peck vs. Longwood, 14 points and 10 rebounds on Nov. 24, 2012).
• Since going 0-for-5 from the field at Penn State, Ragland has made 9-of-10 field goals with six straight 3-point makes.
TEAM NOTES TO KNOW
• After the Ivy League didn’t compete during the 2019-20 season, Cornell’s first game against Binghamton, a 76-67 Big Red victory, was its first in 612 days.
• The Big Red features an 18-player roster for sixth-year head coach Brian Earl that includes 11 that had never suited up for Cornell and 10 that had never played a collegiate game prior to Nov. 9.
• No player that had previously suited up for a full season for the Big Red averaged 20 minutes per game. Along with the 11 players that have never played a minute for Cornell, two of the returners combined to play 41 total minutes.
• The Big Red’s home win over Colgate on Nov. 16 was its first contest at Newman Arena since a 67-58 defeat at the hand of Harvard on Feb. 29, 2020 - a span of 627 days.
• With a 122-64 victory over Keuka, Brian Earl secured his 50th win as a collegiate head coach.
• During Cornell’s current four-game win streak, Cornell has shot .569 from the floor (148-260) and .464 from the 3-point arc (58-of-125).
• The Big Red has shot better than 50 percent from the floor for four consecutive games, the first time it has done so in the same season since a five-game span during the 2009-10 Sweet 16 season.
• Cornell is averaging 13.3 3-pointers made per game over its last six.
• Cornell’s 200 assists are the second most of any NCAA school in the country, behind only Division III Yeshiva (237).
• In two different games this season, Cornell has limited opponents below 20 percent shooting from beyond the arc in more than 30 attempts - prior to this season it had never happened since the 3-point shot was instituted in Division I in 1986.
• The Big Red’s five-game win streak to start the season was its longest since walking off the floor victorious in nine consecutive contests late in 2009-10.
• Its six-game non-conference roll was its longest since winning 10 consecutive during the 2009-10 season when it advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16.
• Over its last six contests, Cornell is averaging 26.3 assists and has a 2.51 assist:turnover ratio.
• Cornell has held seven of its nine opponents to 40 percent shooting or below, and seven foes to sub-33 percent shooting from beyond the arc.
• The Big Red is averaging 44.4 points per game off the bench, including 83 against Keuka in its last outing.
• Cornell has outscored opponents 206-70 on fastbreak points so far this season.
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES TO KNOW
• The Big Red is one the least experienced teams in the country in 2021-22, bringing back less than a third of its scoring, rebounding and assists from two seasons ago (Cornell and the Ivy League did not compete in 2020-21 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic).
• Cornell has hit a 3-pointer in 896 consecutive games 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 942 of 946 games (6,217 3-pointers over that span).
• Brian Earl and his brother Dan (VMI) one of three active sets of brothers directing Division I programs, joining Bobby (Arizona State) and Danny (Connecticut) Hurley and Joe (Boston University) and James (Yale) Jones.
• Ninth-year assistant coach Jon Jaques was a starter and senior captain on the 2009-10 Cornell team that advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16.
• Four 2020 Cornell graduates and Big Red starters — Jimmy Boeheim (Syracuse, 14.1 ppg., 6.1 rpg.), Bryan Knapp (George Washington), Terrance McBride (Rice, 2.6 ppg., 1.2 rpg., 1.8 apg.) and Riley Voss (Wright State, 2.8 ppg, 1.4 rpg., 0.6 apg.) — are all playing at Division I institutions this winter as grad students.
• 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.
• The Big Red continues to be ranked among the best according to the annual NCAA Division I Academic Progress Report (APR). 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 10 times in since the APR began in 2005, including seven consecutive (2009-16).
• Dating back to the first overtime game against Penn way back in 1922, Cornell is 41-51 in games that go an extra period. Cornell is 7-10 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 30-19 in home overtime games, 2-2 in neutral contests and 10-29 in road games.
CAPTAINS
• A trio of first-year captains will lead the Big Red into the 2021-22 campaign.
• Seniors Kobe Dickson and Sarju Patel and junior Greg Dolan will take primary leadership roles.
