On Sept. 9, Cornell became the seventh Ancient Eight school to release its schedule for the upcoming 2016-17 campaign. After getting the travel bug from its August trip to Spain, the Big Red will hit the road for 18 of their 29 games in Coach Brian Earl’s first season.
The 15 game nonconference schedule will see Cornell heading away from Ithaca for trips near and far 11 times in the season’s first two months. The Big Red will have some relatively short trips for games against Binghamton, Siena, Lafayette, Monmouth, Syracuse and Albany. They will earn its frequent flier miles with trips to Houston, Laramie, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
There will be homecoming games for seniors Robert Hatter, Desmond Fleming and JoJo Fallas. Hatter and Fleming can invite their families for the pre-Thanksgiving matchup against the University of Houston. For the Los Angeles-based Talmudic three-point specialist, the Big Red will have a December 19th matchup against USC as part of the Las Vegas Invitational.
In addition to the USC matchup, Cornell will visit Wyoming in the first contest in the Las Vegas Invitational. After the USC game, the Big Red will head to Vegas for the last two games against Troy and either Southeast Missouri State or Chicago State.
The team’s four home non-conference games will be against Colgate, in a rematch from last year’s thrilling double overtime victory, Northeastern, UMass-Lowell, and Fisher College of the NAIA.
Including the Ivy League, the Red will face nine teams that earned post-season bids in the 2015-16 season – Syracuse, USC and Yale (NCAA); Houston, Monmouth and Princeton (NIT); Siena and Albany (CBI); and Columbia (CIT).
For its Ivy League campaign, Cornell starts off with a home contest against Columbia on Jan. 14. The following Saturday, the Red travel downstate to complete the home-and-home with their Empire State rival. The Red will stay in Ithaca for the next two weekends as they face Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown and Yale.
For their next four contests, the Red will hit the road again southbound to face Princeton and Penn, followed by rematches with Dartmouth and Harvard. In the penultimate regular season weekend, Cornell hosts Penn and Princeton before completing the slate on the road with Yale and Brown.
According to Cornell Athletics, the team will travel 12,700 miles this season. Count the summer trip to Spain, and the number grows to 21,000 miles. However, the travelogue number that will count the most is if the team can make the 230-mile trip down to Philadelphia as one of four participants in the inaugural Ivy League Postseason Tournament.