PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- After a first half where nothing went right, the Cornell men's basketball team could seemingly do nothing wrong after the break. The Big Red weathered a barrage of Penn 3-pointers and a decade's worth of Palestra sadness with an 87-81 victory over the Quakers on Friday evening at The Palestra. The win improved Cornell to0 21-5 (10-2 Ivy) and kept the Big Red in a first-place tie in the Ivy standings. 

The rally from a 14-point second half deficit also ensured yet another game of the year candidate for Saturday evening when the Big Red visits Princeton in a battle for the top spot in the Ancient Eight.

Cornell scored 53 points in the second half on 53 percent shooting, didn't turn the ball over in the final 20 minutes and closed strong to snap a nine-game skid against Penn at the famed Palestra, 10 games if you include its Ivy Tournament semifinal loss to Harvard in 2017. It was Brian Earl's first win in Philadelphia as head coach after a long history as a player for the Tigers in the storied Penn-Princeton series.

AK Okereke scored a career-high 18 points, including the go-ahead 3-pointer with 2:12 to play, to pace four double figure scorers for the visitors. Cooper Noard notched 13 points, Chris Manon tallied 11 points with five rebounds and three steals and Nazir Williams had 10 points, three rebounds and three assists in the win. Sean Hansen posted nine points and seven rebounds, Guy Ragland Jr. scored nine with five boards and Jake Fiegen added seven points and a team-best eight boards. Cornell shot 47 percent from the floor and made 12 3-pointers while outrebounding the home team 36-33. The Big Red had a 36-22 edge in points in the paint and a 21-14 advantage in second chance points.


Clark Slajchert scored a game-high 22 points to lead the Quakers, while Cam Thrower and Sam Brown each tallied 15. Penn shot 50 percent from the floor and connected on 15-of-34 3-pointers. Nick Spinoso had seven points, 14 rebounds and eight assists, narrowly missing a triple-double.

For the entirety of the first half, the final score would have seemed unthinkable.

Penn scored the game's first 12 points and the Big Red never clawed all the way back, trailing 46-34 at the break despite 12 points from Okereke. Cornell couldn't do anything right in the first 20 minutes, turning it over 10 times - eight in the first 10 minutes - and shot just 4-for-17 from 3-point range (24 percent) while the Quakers hit on 50 percent of its attempts and connected on 7-of-17 from beyond the arc. Slajchert scored 11 points before the break to lead Penn.

The second half was a completely different animal, and after the Quakers scored on their first possession to go up 14, Cornell answered quickly. A 9-0 spurt capped by a Chris Manon steal and dunk forced a Penn timeout less than three minutes in. Cornell eventually knotted the score at 56-56 on a 3-pointer by Ragland Jr. with 14:34 left, then eventually grabbed the lead four minutes later when Isaiah Gray hit Noard for a backdoor layup to make it 65-64 in favor of the visitors.

Penn tied the game three times in the final nine minutes, the last two times on Slajchert 3-pointers, but Okereke put the Big Red ahead for good with under three minutes remaining. Being guarded on the left wing, he calmly took two retreat dribbles, spun around and buried a late-contested 3-pointer with 2:12 remaining to go up 83-80. He grabbed the rebound after a stop on the other end, and this time Ragland hit the second of two free throws with 36 seconds remaining to make it a two possession game. Another Penn miss was rebounded by Cornell and Fiegen buried the first of two free throws to go up five. A late Manon dunk sealed the win, and Cornell celebrated the fourth-largest second-half rally by the Big Red for a win this century (and biggest on the road). 

NEXT UP
• The Big Red eyes a season sweep of Princeton when the two teams meet on Saturday, March 2 at 7 p.m. at Jadwin Gymnasium.
• The contest will be broadcast live on ESPN+.
• A win over the Tigers would complete Cornell's first season sweep in the series since the 2019-20 campaign.
• That was also the last time Cornell won at Jadwin, going 0-3 (0-1 vs. Yale) since.