Sports Then and Now

Big Red players and fans react as the Cornell name is revealed during the NCAA Tournament selection show. Cornell is seeded 12th in the East Region and will play 5th-seeded Temple in the first round.

For three years running, making history or ending droughts has been as common for the Cornell men’s basketball team as gorges are to the university’s location in Ithaca, NY. The 2007-2008 team finished 22-6 to establish a school single-season record for wins en route to capturing the Big Red’s first Ivy League Championship in 20 years. That team also became the first in school history and only the 13^th in league history to go undefeated in league play at 14-0.

Last season’s club went 21-10 overall and 11-3 in the league while becoming the first Ivy League team other than Penn or Princeton to win back-to-back league titles. Cornell’s 2009-10 team has set an abundance of individual and team records lead by 6-foot-7 senior sharpshooting forward Ryan Wittman who became the Big Red’s all-time leading scorer (1,974 points) and was named the Ivy League Player-of-the-Year. However the biggest news for Cornell (27-4) this past regular season came on Feb. 1 when the Big Red was ranked 25^th in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll, its’ first national ranking in 59 years.

Cornell remained ranked in the same poll the following week on Feb. 8 when it climbed to No. 22. After suffering their only league loss of the season, a 79-64 setback at Penn on Feb. 12, the Big Red fell out of the poll. However, Cornell has not lost since and has appeared in the others receiving votes category in each poll since then while ending the regular season on a seven-game winning streak. Read the rest of this entry →

Cornell point guard Louis Dale is part of a great senior class.

Ithaca, N.Y. has always prided itself on being home to Cornell University, a prestigious Ivy League School that has put the city on the map globally. Its’ rich academic history is reflected in its’ colleges such as The Johnson School of Management, The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and the College of Veterinary Medicine. Over the past decade, Cornell has had multiple students be named Rhodes Scholars and four faculty members receive the Pulitzer Prize.

While Cornell will always be recognized academically as one of the world’s premier research and land-grant universities, its’ visibility has also been enhanced by the success of its’ athletic program over the last several years which has added too its’ already great athletic history. The women’s ice hockey team just won its’ first ever Eastern College Athletic Conference regular-season title on Saturday Feb. 20 with a 6-1 win over Union (NY). The men’s lacrosse team has gone to the NCAA Final Four two out of the last three years including last year’s national championship game where they lost a 10-9 heartbreaker to Syracuse in overtime.

The men’s hockey team always plays before sellout crowds at Lynah Rink and has been dominant for decades. Wrestler Jordan Leen won the national championship at 157 pounds in 2008. The women’s basketball team won the Ivy League Championship – its’ first in the program’s history – in 2008. Speaking of basketball, the men’s team also won the Ivy League Championship with an unblemished 14-0 league mark in 2008, their first conference championship in 20 years. Read the rest of this entry →