PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Say this much for first year Cornell head coach Bill Courtney: he hasn’t lost his team at all, despite the season going in such a way that a lot of coaches might. It hasn’t been the kind of storybook season recent years were for the Big Red, who got their first Ivy League win of the season on Saturday night when they pulled out a 91-79 decision at Brown.
No one realistically expected the Big Red to win a fourth straight Ivy League title this season. Too many key players from last season are gone and the coaching staff is new. Close losses have dogged the Big Red all season, as they have been close too many times to mention while falling short. Courtney has seen the team lose confidence late in games at times, the cumulative result of the close losses. Cornell entered Saturday night’s game with a 3-10 mark in games decided by single digits as part of their 4-15 overall record.
Even with all of the close losses, the Big Red brought a little extra baggage into Saturday night’s contest. A night earlier, they had a 10-point lead with less than two minutes left at Yale, only to come away with a 71-70 loss. There are close losses, and then there’s Friday night.
“It’s like you snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” said Courtney. “Anything that could go wrong, went wrong in that run. They had three-point plays, we turned it over, missed free throws.”
“We’ve lost a lot of close games,” junior guard Chris Wroblewski added after the win at Brown. “The accumulation of that is really hard to take, and last night was like a cherry on top but not in a good way. To be up ten with two minutes left in the game, you think you pretty much have a victory there, and to give it away like we did was very hard on us.”
Part of Cornell’s identity this year has been that they keep battling, and that showed up the last two weekends as each Friday night game has left something to be desired. A week earlier, 19 turnovers keyed a disappointing loss at Dartmouth, and not helping is that a stomach bug was going around the team as well. This time around, they competed on Saturday night like any other time, and although they trailed a fair amount, they were never down by much in getting the win on Saturday night.
Courtney has sensed all along that this team is a very together unit, led by holdovers from the title teams like Wroblewski, Adam Wire, Mark Coury and emerging wing Errick Peck. Wroblewski has been playing through an injury to the pelvic region of late, while Peck put up nice numbers last Saturday in minutes that were limited by being one of the victims of the aforementioned stomach bug. There aren’t any chemistry issues with this team, a key reason they haven’t gone down easily.
“Winning by ten points with less than two minutes left and losing is very difficult, so to bounce back like these guys did today shows a lot of character,” said Courtney. “That’s what we talked about, the character of this team.”
Saturday’s win came in part from having great balance. Six players scored in double figures, led by Drew Ferry’s 20 points. The other five all scored between 10 and 13 points, with Wroblewski adding five assists and Peck having just two but figuring in more baskets in the second half, when he didn’t score. He helped other plays develop, and the Big Red were 16-34 from long range in a building where, as Wroblewski remembered, they went 20-30 from behind the arc in last year’s clinching game for the Ivy League title.
“There must be something to the rims here, they’re treating us well,” Wroblewski said with a smile.
Peck has made a nice improvement in the last couple of weeks to expand his game. Already athletic enough to be a good scorer and the player on the team with the most upside, he’s now making shots from long range. He went 5-8 in last weekend’s games and 5-11 this weekend, pushing his season percentage over 40 percent. Courtney has seen this development come along and feels he’s maturing as a player. For the sophomore wing, it was a matter of seeing how he was being defended and adjusting.
“A lot of teams would just set somebody up to take a charge,” said Peck. “So with guys playing off me, I’m just trying to work with my shot and become more confident in taking the shot.”
Besides the close losses, Cornell has been on the road quite a bit. In part, that’s the nature of being an Ivy League team as far as non-league play goes, but the league schedule maker wasn’t very kind to this team early on as well. They have been on the road the last two weekends, and five of their first six Ivy League games have been on the road. They will be at home for the next two weekends, which should help their fortunes. Sure enough, because of inclement weather that was expected on the way back to Ithaca, they couldn’t go home so fast. The team spent Saturday night in Providence before heading back on Sunday.
“We’ve been on the road so much. Getting a win and getting to go home will be a tremendous boost for us,” said Courtney.
The bottom line hasn’t reflected the quality of this team, and it probably won’t by the end of the season. But with some home games to come and the team very much together, there might be a few more wins to come. No matter what happens, they’ll be a tough out and have a chance to impact the league since all of the contenders still have to go to Ithaca before the season is over.
