ITHACA, N.Y. -- Sole possession of first place in the Ivy League will be on the line when Cornell hosts defending champ Yale on Friday, Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. at Newman Arena. The contest will be broadcast on ESPN+ with Johnny Gadamowitz and Eric Taylor '05 on the call.

• With dual 8-1 records, the two teams are bunched up with third-place Princeton (7-2) at the top of the conference standings.
• The first meeting between the teams was a game of the year candidate, with Yale winning on a last-second bucket by Matt Knowling to overcome a 15-point deficit in New Haven, Conn. on Feb. 10.
• Head coach Brian Earl's Big Red is off and running, averaging 83.6 points per game while shooting .498 overall and 35 percent from 3-point range while assisting on 18.1 buckets per outing.
• Cornell has been especially dominant in its 9-0 start at home this year, averaging 88.3 points on .521 shooting overall and .372 from 3-point range with 21.7 assists per game and a 1.91 assist:turnover ratio.
• The Big Red is shooting a blistering .637 from inside the arc this season (first nationally in two-point field goal percentage).

GAME INFORMATION
Yale at Cornell
DATE & TIME: Friday, Feb. 23 at 7:00 p.m.
SITE: Newman Arena – Ithaca, N.Y.
RECORDS: Yale (17-7, 8-1 Ivy League), Cornell (19-4, 8-1 Ivy League)
SERIES RECORD: Yale leads 122-112
BROADCAST: ESPN+
STATS: CornellBigRed.com
DIGITAL PROGRAM: CornellBigRed.com

THE SERIES
125 Years • 257 Miles • 234 Meetings
Overall: Yale leads 122-112
In Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell leads 66-48
Current Streak: Yale, 3 games
Last Meeting: Yale won 80-78, 2/10/24 in New Haven, Conn.
Earl vs. Yale: 2-12

SERIES NOTES
Yale was Cornell's first intercollegiate opponent when the two teams met on Feb. 25, 1899 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. (Yale won 49-7) • Yale has had the better of it recently, winning 20 of the last 23 meetings between the squads, including 16 straight before Cornell's win in 2022 • prior to that, the Big Red had gone 10-4 over a seven-year stretch (2005-13).

A WIN OVER YALE WOULD
• push Cornell's record to 20-4 overall, marking the program's fifth-ever 20-win season.
• put the Big Red in sole possession of first place in the Ivy League at 9-1.
• make the Big Red 10-0 at Newman Arena this season with 11 straight wins at home and a 31-4 record over the past three seasons.
• give Cornell a 52-26 record overall (.667) since the beginning of the 2021-22 season.
• be the 1,346th in program history (1,345-1,496-2 in 123 seasons, .473).

LAST TIME VS. YALE
• Matt Knowling's three-point play on an inbounds set with 3.2 seconds remaining lifted defending Ivy champ Yale past Cormnell 80-78 at John J. Lee Amphitheater in a battle of conference unbeatens that felt like a heavyweight fight. 
• Chris Manon scored 22 points, including the go-ahead basket with  27.9 seconds remaining, on 9-of-11 shooting from the field and added three rebounds, three assists, two steals and a blocked shot.
• Nazir Williams was 8-of-11 from the floor for 17 points, while Isaiah Gray netted six points with six assists and four rebounds. 
• Cornell shot 55 percent from the floor against a Yale defense surrendering just 41 percent shooting entering the contest.
• Danny Wolf led Yale with 25 points and 10 rebounds, but also had five turnovers. 
• Knowling ended the contest with 12 points, nine rebounds and four assists for a Yale team that had 17 offensive rebounds and a 20-2 edge in second chance points. 
• John Poulakidas had 13 points, including two key triples among the three Yale connected on all day, and August Mahoney had 11 with five boards.


 
LAST TIME OUT
• Senior Chris Manon (25) and freshman Jake Fiegen (14) each tallied career highs and the Cornell men's basketball team rallied from a 14-point first half deficit to top Dartmouth 89-80 at Newman Arena. 
• Manon connected on 9-of-16 from the floor and hit three 3-pointers while adding four steals, besting his previous career best of 23 points along the way. 
Fiegen, meanwhile, set a new standard for the second straight game with 14 points and four rebounds. 
Nazir Williams notched 14 points, seven assists and five rebounds and AK Okereke rounded out the four double figure scorers with 12. 
Cooper Noard had eight points and Guy Ragland Jr. posted a team-best eight rebounds. 
• The Big Red gritted out the win after shooting 47 percent overall and making 12 3-pointers. 
• Dusan Neskovic had 23 points, while Jayden Williams added 13, Brandon Mitchell-Day scored 12 with seven boards and Jackson Munro scored 12 with nine rebounds and seven assists. 



PLAYER NOTES TO KNOW
• Cornell enters the weekend with two double figure scorers, six with at least 8.5 ppg. and eight regulars averaging at least 6.3 points per contest.
• Six regular Big Red players are shooting .497 or better from the floor with three of them above 58 percent.
• The Big Red's four leading 3-point shooters (Cooper Noard, Keller Boothby, Nazir Williams and Guy Ragland) have combined to shoot .388 (139-358) from beyond the arc.
• Junior Nazir Williams is averaging 13.2 points and 3.8 assists with a 38:17 assist:turnover ratio over the past nine contests.
• Over his past 13 contests, Williams has a 2.45 assist-turnover ratio (49:20) and is 33-of-37 from the free-throw line (89 percent).
• Williams leads the team in minutes played at 24.1 through 23 contests and is among 11 regulars averaging at least 8.4 minutes.
• Senior Chris Manon, a two-time Ivy League Player of the Week this season (Jan. 2, Jan. 29), is averaging 14.7 points, 4.4 rebounds, 3.6 assists, 2.7 steals and 0.6 blocks over his past 13 contests while shooting .609 from the floor (78-of-128).
• Manon has 165 steals in 77 career games, or 2.14 steals per game, ahead of Wallace Prather's school record average of 1.89. Manon is challenging the record despite averaging just 19.9 minutes per game for his career. 
• Manon had 63 steals in 2022-23, surpassing a two-decades old single-season school record 54 set by DeShawn Standard (1997-98) and matched by Wallace Prather (2001-02).
• Manon's .540 career field goal percentage ranks sixth all-time at Cornell among players with at least 400 shot attempts.
• Manon and Sean Hansen have joined a select group of 12 Big Red players to record at least 500 points, 250 rebounds, 100 assists, 25 blocked shots and 25 steals in their careers. Four of those 12 Big Red players to reach those marks have played for head coach Brian Earl (Matt Morgan '19 and Josh Warren '20 along with Manon and Hansen).  
• Senior Isaiah Gray is shooting .680 from inside the 3-point arc this season (70-of-103).
• Gray has shot 50 percent or better from the floor in 12 of his past 15 contests.
• Over his past 12 games, Gray is averaging 2.0 steals per game.
• The Big Red's two-headed center of senior Sean Hansen and junior Guy Ragland Jr. combined to average 18.1 points, 9.1 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 1.4 steals and 0.8 blocks while playing 40.8 minutes per game in 2022-23.
• The duo has been every bit as productive this season, averaging 18.3 points, 8.4 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 1.5 steals and 0.7 blocks in 38.3 minutes per game while shooting 51 percent from the floor and 38 percent from 3-point range. 
• With his double-double in last year's win over Ithaca, Ragland became just the sixth player in school history with multiple double-double efforts off the bench (Stan Brown, Mike Millane, Bernard Jackson, Brian Kopf and Jeff Foote) in a career.
• Senior Keller Boothby has multiple 3-pointers made in 13 of his past 19 games, shooting 35-of-76 (.461) over that stretch.
• Over the past two seasons, Boothby has shot .468 (36-of-77) from 3-point range in Ivy play.
• In 13 home games in 2022-23, Boothby had 11 assists and one turnover in 245 minutes of play.
• Boothby's 2.32 career assist-turnover ratio is the highest in program history for a non-guard (58 assists/25 turnovers). 
• Boothby has committed just 25 career turnovers in 1519 minutes, or one every 60.8 minutes of action.
• Boothby missed his first career game at Harvard after making 74 appearances over his first three seasons.
• Sophomore AK Okereke is shooting 61 percent from the floor (59-of-97). The former walk-on had a streak of 10 consecutive made field goals over the first three games of 2023-24, tied for the fifth-longest streak in school history (record is 14 by Darryl Smith in 2015-16).
• The Big Red is 2-0 with Okereke in the starting lineup this season, with the sophomore averaging 10.5 points, 2.0 rebounds and 1.0 assists while shooting 80 percent from the floor (8-of-10) and 67 percent from beyond the arc (2-of-3) in those games.
• Okereke has shot 67 percent or better from the floor in 12 different contests.
• Freshman Jake Fiegen has seen a significant increase in his minutes over the past 10 games (from 8.1 to 19.6). His insertion into the lineup has coincided with a Big Red defense renaissance, as Cornell has gone 9-1 while significantly cutting down its points allowed (69.0 from 78.3 over the first 13 games).
• Freshman Jacob Beccles scored 15 points in his collegiate debut, the most by a Big Red rookie in his first game since Chris Manon netted 17 points in a win over Binghamton to kick off the 2021-22 season.

TEAM NOTES TO KNOW
• Cornell earned two votes in the USA Today Coaches Poll on Jan. 29 after its victory over Princeton, the first time the Big Red earned recognition in the poll since ranking No. 17 in the final poll in 2010 (April 6, 2010).
• Since its return from COVID, Cornell men's basketball has posted a 51-26 record (.662), a mark that is 51-18 when removing guarantee games (.739).
• Cornell is 30-4 at home over the past three seasons, including a perfect 15-0 against non-conference opponents over that span.
• The team's 19 wins are tied for fifth-most in a season, matching the 1964-65 and 1966-67 squads.
• Over the past three seasons, the Big Red is averaging 17.6 assists per game and hitting 10.2 3-pointers per game while averaging 81.4 points per game. Over that stretch, Cornell is shooting .593 from two-point range.
• Over its past 17 contests, the Big Red is shooting .644 (339-of-526) from inside the 3-point arc.
• In eight Ivy games this season, Cornell has assisted on 155 baskets with 98 turnovers (1.58 assist-turnover ratio).  
• Cornell is turning the ball over just 10.8 times per game in the past 12 games after averaging 15.0 over the first 11 contests.
• Cornell has hit double figures in 3-pointers 13 times this season, with a season high 17 coming in the midweek win over Wells.
• Of the 31 100-point games for the Big Red in school history, head coach Brian Earl has been at the helm for 10 of them, including for five of the top 10 totals.
• Earl's teams also have 11 of the top 20 single-game assist totals and 18 of the top 20 made 3-point field goal totals.
• The Big Red was picked third in the Ivy League Preseason Media Poll, its highest preseason selection since also being chosen third in the 2010-11 poll.
• Cornell has hit a 3-pointer in 962 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 1,007 of 1,011 games (6,883 3-pointers over that span).
• Graduated seniors Greg Dolan '23 (Loyola Chicago) and Marcus Filien (UAlbany) have moved on to play as graduate transfers at other Division I institutions (Ivy League does not allow graduate student eligibility).  
• Over the past three seasons, nine grad transfers have gone on to play Division I basketball elsewhere — Jimmy Boeheim (Syracuse), Kobe Dickson (Howard), Bryan Knapp (George Washington), Terrance McBride (Rice), Dean Noll (Stony Brook), Sarju Patel (UAlbany) and Riley Voss (Wright State).
• Current seniors Darius Ervin, Isaiah Gray, Sean Hansen, Chris Manon and Evan Williams are currently in the portal for 2024-25.
• Cornell led the Ivy League in 11 categories in 2022-23, including scoring offense (81.7), 3-pointers made (10.7) and attempted (30.4) per game, assists (17.5), assist:turnover ratio (1.41), steals (9.7), effective field goal percentage (.556) and fastbreak points (15.9), while ranking in the top 10 nationally in scoring offense, assists, bench points, fastbreak points, steals and 3-pointers made and attempted. 
• The Big Red had its streak of 23 consecutive non-conference wins against opponents from conferences other than the ACC or Big Ten dating back to an 80-76 loss at Hartford on Dec. 22, 2019 snapped at George Mason— a streak that spanned 1,424 days.
• At the same time, Cornell has now won 30 straight non-guarantee non-conference games dating back to that same loss to Hartford.

MISCELLANEOUS TEAM NOTES
• Brian Earl and his brother Dan (Chattanooga) are one of five active sets of brothers directing Division I programs, joining Bryce (Grand Canyon) and Scott (Baylor) Drew, Bobby (Arizona State) and Danny (Connecticut) Hurley, Joe (Boston University) and James (Yale) Jones and Archie (Rhode Island) and Sean (Xavier) Miller.
• Associate head 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.
• 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).

THE BIG RED IN OVERTIME
• Dating back to the first overtime game against Penn way back in 1922, Cornell is 42-51 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 31-19 in home overtime games, 2-2 in neutral contests and 10-29 in road games.

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.

UP NEXT
• The Big Red will celebrate its seven seniors when it plays its final regular season home game of the 2023-24 season when it welcomes Brown to Newman Arena on Saturday, Feb. 24 at 6 p.m. at Newman Arena.
• The contest will be broadcast live on ESPN+.
• Cornell will be out for a season sweep of the Bears following an 84-83 victory on Jan. 20 .
• The two teams have split the past eight meetings right down the middle (4-4).