ITHACA, N.Y. — The No. 16-ranked Cornell men's soccer team welcomes its Empire State rival Columbia on Saturday to Berman Field on Senior Day in the Big Red's final match of the 2022 regular-season slate. Fans attending the match are also encouraged to wear red for the team's Red Out.
Game Information
SITE: Berman Field – Ithaca, N.Y. (natural surface)
TIME: Saturday, Nov. 12 – 4 p.m.
RECORDS: Columbia (1-8-6, 0-2-4 Ivy), Cornell (12-3-1, 4-1-1 Ivy)
SERIES RECORD: Columbia leads, 28-23-9
BROADCAST: ESPN+
STATS: CornellBigRed.com
Last Time Out
• Yale's Paolo Carroll scored in the seventh minute before it was countered by a senior Brandon Morales' penalty kick in the 15th minute as the Bulldogs and Cornell played to a 1-1 draw at Reese Stadium in New Haven, Conn., last Saturday.
• The draw was Cornell's first of the season and its first since concluding the 2021 season with a 1-1 draw with Columbia in double overtime. It was the first tie between Cornell and Yale since Oct. 19, 2013.
• With his goal on the penalty kick, Morales now has eight points (two goals, four assists) over his last four matches, while increasing his team lead in points to 23.
What's at Stake
• Cornell enters Saturday's match second in the Ivy League table with 13 points. Only Penn (15 points) has a higher point total than the Big Red.
• A victory by Cornell and a loss by Penn at Princeton, will give Cornell its first Ivy League title since 2012 and clinch the Ivy League's automatic qualifier into the 2022 NCAA Division I Men's Soccer Tournament, which begins play on Thursday (Nov. 17).
• The Big Red can also share the Ivy League title with Penn if Cornell wins and the Quakers tie to Princeton. Both teams would be crowned Ivy League champions, but Penn would earn the Ivy League's automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament due to the head-to-head tiebreaker, which Penn controls thanks to its 3-2 win on Oct. 15 at Berman Field.
• Despite having its four-game win streak snapped last weekend at Yale, Cornell is still unbeaten over its last five games (4-0-1). With a win or tie on Saturday, it would be Cornell's second six-game unbeaten streak of the season. The Big Red posted a six-game win streak between Sept. 17 and Oct. 8.
• With a win on Saturday afternoon, Cornell will register its 13th victory of the season, becoming just the fourth team in the 113 years of competition in which men's soccer logged 13-plus wins in a season. This year's team would join the 1995 and 2012 teams who had 15-win seasons and the 1972 squad who finished with a 13-4-0 mark.
• Following the program's 2-1 win over Dartmouth on Oct. 29, this year's team is just the seventh team in program history to amass 12 wins in a season.
Crunching Numbers
• The United Soccer Coaches released its updated rankings this past Tuesday afternoon, which features Cornell being in the top 25 for a sixth consecutive week, tied with Ohio State at No. 16. The six-week streak of being in the top 25 is the program's longest since going 11 consecutive weeks inside the top 25, spanning the final 10 weeks of the 2012 season and the 2013 preseason poll.
• Dating back to its inception in 1996, Cornell has now been ranked in the top 25 of the United Soccer Coaches poll 50 times.
Points Galore!
• Senior midfielder Brandon Morales is second in the Ivy League with his 23 points (eight goals, seven assists). Morales is one of three Ivy League players with 20-plus points, joining Penn's Stas Korzeniowski (24 points — 10 goals, four assists) and Ben Stitz (21 points — eight goals, five assists).
• Morales has an Ivy League-leading five multi-point games, logging a pair of multi-goal games and a trio of multi-assist games. Korzeniowski and Stitz are behind with four multi-point games.
• Senior Connor Drought and junior Kisa Kiingi also rank in the top 10 in the Ivy League in total points. Kiingi and Drought are tied for ninth with 14 points apiece.
• Morales' average of 1.44 points per contest ranks second in the Ivy League, only behind Korzeniowski's 1.60 average. Drought is ninth (0.933) and fifth-year forward Emeka Eneli is 10th in the same category (0.928).
Helping the Team Out
• With his assist on Henry Hylbert's goal in the Oct. 29 win over Dartmouth, senior Connor Drought increased his assist total on the year to eight, which is tied for 21st nationally and is second in the Ivy League only behind Harvard's Willem Ebbinge (nine assists).
• Drought's eight assists are tied with Adamo Notarantonio (1995), Adam Skumawitz (2000), and Nico Nissl (2012) for the fourth-most by a Cornell player in a season.
• With Drought's next assist, he will assume sole possession of fourth place and would only trail Chris Agoliati (11 in 1972), Rob Elliott (10 in 1995), and Richard Stimpson (10 in 1998) on the all-time single-season list.
• Right behind Drought is senior Brandon Morales who has the eighth-most assists by a Cornell player in a season. Morales is currently tied with Stimpson (2000), Ian Pilarski (2001), Daniel Haber (2012), Tyler Bagley and Emeka Eneli (2021), who all had seven assists in their respective seasons.
Balanced Scoring Attack
• Cornell enters Saturday's match with 104 points as a team, tied for 29th in the Division I ranks through games played on Nov. 9. The 104 points are tied with Penn for the second-most by an Ivy League team. Harvard has the most with 116 points.
• Senior midfielder Brandon Morales, junior defender Kisa Kiingi, senior defender Connor Drought, fifth-year forward Emeka Eneli, and sophomore forward Alioune Ka all have at least 10 points this season, marking the first time in Cornell history there has been five players with 10-plus points in a season.
Double-Digit Wins
• Freshman goalkeeper Ryan Friedberg has been the Big Red's go-to keeper this year, having started all 16 games this season. Friedberg has logged all but 11:25 of the Big Red's minutes this season, while posting a 12-3-1 record with a 1.01 goals-against average and a .692 save percentage.
• Friedberg is just the third Cornell goalkeeper since 1979, when goalkeeper wins were recorded, to register 12-plus wins in a season. Only Rick Pflasterer (15 in 2012) and Quinn O'Sullivan (14 wins in 1995) have more wins in a season.
• Following the Oct. 29 win over Dartmouth, Friedberg broke a four-way tie for the third-most wins in a season, surpassing Hemant Sharma (1996), Ryan Shellow (2018), and Brady McSwain (2021), to assume third place.
Berman Field Advantage
• Since 2019, the Big Red is unbeaten in 19 of its last 21 matches at Berman Field, posting a 16-2-3 record and a .833 win percentage, which is tied for seventh nationally with Pittsburgh.
• Cornell is one of 15 programs with at least a .800 home win percentage over the last four-plus years.
• The Big Red have just five home matches (two losses, three draws) since 2019 to not result in a win. That total is the fewest at the Division I level. New Hampshire (30-2-4), Missouri State (33-3-3), and Washington (35-4-2) are the others.
• Cornell's two home losses since 2019 — both of which have come this year to Vermont (Sept. xx) and Penn (Oct. 15) — are tied for the fewest by a Division I program with Georgetown (39-2-5) and New Hampshire (29-2-4).
Having an Eye for the Goal
• The Big Red has scored 35 goals so far this year, marking the program's eighth time that Cornell has logged at least 35 goals in a season.
• It is the second consecutive year and the fifth time over the last 27 seasons Cornell has potted at least 35 goals.
• Dating back to 2019, Cornell has scored in 46 of its last 49 matches, having been shutout just once in each of the last thtee seasons.
• During John Smith's tenure as head coach at Cornell, the Big Red has scored in 81 of the 100 games (81.0 percent), which ranks as the fourth-highest total by a Cornell head coach. It is the highest since Dan Wood (1971-75), the coach in which Smith's position is currently endowed for, saw his teams scored in 82.1 percent of his games as head coach.
Scouting the Lions
• Columbia enters Saturday's contest with a 1-7-6 overall record and a 0-1-4 mark in Ivy play.
• The Lions are currently in the midsdt of a 10-game winless streak (0-5-5) since posting a 1-0 victory on Sept. 12 to its fellow New York City-based school St. John's.
• Offense has come at a premium for Columbia this season, only mustering seven goals. Joao Lima is the lone Lion with multiple goals (two) on the season. Lima leads the team in points (four), while Will DeNight and Jack Muoio each have three points apiece (one goal, one assist).
• Goaltending has been a strong suit for Columbia this season as Michael Collodi has a 1-6-6 record with a 1.15 goals-against average and a .769 save percentage. Collodi has four clean sheets on the year.
Series vs. Columbia
• Columbia leads the all-time series between the two Empire State schools, 28-23-9.
• Cornell is unbeaten over its last three matches against the Lions (2-0-1), outscoring Columbia by a 7-2 margin. The Big Red is also 5-3-2 over its last 10 against Columbia.
• Saturday's match will be the 15th consecutive time that Cornell and Columbia are playing in the month of November. The last time the two programs did not play in the year's 11th month was back on Sept. 23, 2006.
