Men's Hoops Hosts Harvard With Eye On Weekend Sweep

STREAKS, STORYLINES & SIDEBARS 
• The Cornell men's basketball team will attempt to stay squarely in the Ivy League Tournament mix when it welcomes Harvard to Newman Arena for a 6 p.m. tip-off on Saturday, Feb. 18.
• The game will be broadcast live on ESPN+ with Barry Leonard on the call.
• The Big Red needed 27 points and six assists from Nazir Williams and 18 points and 10 rebounds from Sean Hansen to complete a season sweep of Dartmouth in a 95-83 overtime win on Friday evening.
• Cornell avoided a last-second Dartmouth 3-pointer that rimmed out to end regulation, then scored the first 12 points of the extra session to claim the win.
•The win improved Cornell to 10-1 at home on the season with two of its final three at Newman Arena.
• At 6-5 in Ivy play, Cornell is tied with Brown for fourth in the Ivy standings, just a game out of second place.
• With three games to play and six teams within a game of fourth place, a Big Red win would allow it to keep pace with the pack if not move up.
• Since returning from missing three games due to injury, sophomore Nazir Williams is averaging 20.5 points, 4.0 rebounds and 3.5 assists in the past two contests while hitting 10-of-13 3-pointers (.769) spanning his past three games.

THE SERIES 
Overall: Cornell leads 96-86
In Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell leads 51-38
Current Streak: Harvard, 2 games
Last Meeting: Harvard won 95-89, 1/21/23 in Cambridge, Mass.
Earl vs. Harvard: 3-8
Series Notes: Series dates back to the 1901-02 season • Harvard had won six straight meetings before the Big Red’s season sweep during the 2018-19 campaign • Cornell won two consecutive prior to that stretch, but that came on the heels of nine straight Crimson wins.

A WIN OVER HARVARD WOULD ... 
• improve Cornell's record to 17-8.
• push the Big Red to 7-5 in Ivy play and maintain its position in fourth place, or climb as high as tied for second depending on other results around the league.
• complete a season sweep of the Crimson for the first time since the 2009-10 campaign.
• move its home record to 11-1 on the season.
• give Cornell a 10-5 record in its past 15 contests.
• up its all-time Ivy League record to 396-525.
• be the 1,309th in program history (1,308-1,479-2 in 121 seasons, .469).

LAST TIME OUT: Cornell 95, Dartmouth 83 (OT)
GAME STORY I BOX SCORE I HIGHLIGHTS I GALLERY
• The Cornell men's basketball team scored the first 12 points of overtime to hold off Dartmouth 95-83 at Newman Arena. 
• Nazir Williams scored 27 points and added six assists and three steals, Sean Hansen posted his first career double-double with 18 points and 10 rebounds and both Greg Dolan and Isaiah Gray had 17 points apiece. 
• Chris Manon rounded out the five starters in double figures with 11 points on 5-of-5 shooting. 
• Cornell shot 48 percent overall and connected on 10-of-24 from beyond the 3-point arc. 
• The home team had 17 assists and 12 steals in the win, outscoring the Big Green 42-30 in the paint and 22-6 on fastbreaks. 
• Ryan Cornish and Dusan Neskovic each had 19 points for the Big Green, who shot 57 percent from the floor in the second half before going cold in overtime, hitting just 1-of-9 shots from the floor. 
• Dame Adelekun had nine points, 11 rebounds, four assists, two steals and two blocked shots, but also turned the ball over five times as Dartmouth coughed the ball up 22 times as a team.
• Manon's driving layup put the home team back in the lead, and Gray's driving bucked on the ensuing possession built the lead to four.

NOTES TO KNOW:
• Through 11 conference games, the Big Red has four players averaging double figures (Williams 15.3, Dolan 13.5, Manon 13.4, Gray 10.4 ppg.), a fifth at 9.8 (Guy Ragland Jr.) and a sixth at 8.3 (Sean Hansen).
• Sophomore Nazir Williams is shooting 77 percent (10-of-13) from 3-point range in his past three games.
• Since his return from missing three games due to injury, Williams is averaging 20.5 points, 4.0 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 2.0 steals while shooting 59 percent from the floor overall (13-of-22) and 83 percent from the 3-point arc (5-of-6).
•With his 3-for-9 effort from 3-point range against Dartmouth, senior Greg Dolan has enough attempts to qualify for the school's career 3-point percentage list (150), a mark he is now leading with his .439 career percentage (just ahead of Geoff Reeves '10 at .437).
• Junior Chris Manon has 99 steals in 50 career games, or 1.98 steals per game, ahead of Wallace Prather's school record average of 1.89. Manon is challenging the record despite averaging just 18.9 minutes per game for his career. 
• Manon has 52 steals this season, two off the two-decades old single-season school record 54 set by DeShawn Standard (1997-98) and matched by Wallace Prather (2001-02).
• Manon collected seven steals in the win over Binghamton, tied for the second-most in a single-game in school history and the most since Lenny Collins posted a record eight at Bucknell on Jan. 20, 2004.
• Cornell is 20-3 at home over the past two seasons, including 9-3 against Ivy League opponents.
• With 266 3-pointers this season, Cornell's mark ranks second in a season for the Big Red.
• Since its return from COVID, Cornell men's basketball has posted a 31-19 record (.620), a  mark that is 31-13 when removing guarantee games (.705).
• Cornell has hit a 3-pointer in 935 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 981 of 985 games (6,614 3-pointers over that span).

Photos by Dave Burbank, Madison Epperson, Eldon Lindsay, Hannah Rosenberg, Patrick Shanahan and Darl Zehr