Cornell’s Stone Gettings to sit out 2018-19 and become graduate transfer

On Monday evening, Jeff Goodman of ESPN tweeted that Cornell junior forward Stone Gettings would graduate in December and become a graduate transfer.  Gettings, a second-team All-Ivy member in 2017-2018, will sit out the 2018-2019 season in order to save his final year of eligibility.  The Malibu, California native told the Cornell Daily Sun, “I decided to graduate early in December, save myself a ton of money, and have another year to play somewhere else”.

Gettings arrived in Ithaca in the fall of 2015, as a member of Bill Courtney’s last recruiting class.  In his first game for the Big Red, he scored 14 points and hit 4 of 6 three pointers against Georgia Tech.  For the season, he played in 28 games, averaging 2.1 points, 1.8 rebounds and 9.5 minutes a contest.  Following Courtney’s dismissal, arguably, no Cornell player benefited more from the hiring of Princeton’s Brian Earl than Gettings. As the team’s featured front court player, his sophomore numbers increased to 12.4 points, 5.8 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 25.6 minutes per game in his 29 starts.

Last season, Gettings recovered from a preseason knee injury to start 24 of 28 games, finishing with 16.7 points, 6.6 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 26.8 minutes per contest.  For the year, he had three games of 30 or more points, 11 games of 20 or more points, and 5 double-doubles.  He ended the season third in the league in rebounding, sixth in scoring, sixth in free throw percentage (82.5 percent), ninth in assists, and tenth in field goal percentage (48.7 percent).  For his efforts, Gettings was named second team All-Ivy.  With a 3.81 GPA in Applied Economics and Management at Cornell’s Dyson School, he was named to the CoSIDA Academic All-America third team.

According to the Daily Sun article, an unnamed source with knowledge of the situation stated that Gettings decision was unexpected. When asked by the Daily Sun and IHO, Cornell Athletics declined to comment.

At this time, there has been no information regarding any school expressing an interest in the 6’ 9” forward. The last two Big Red forwards to transfer after graduation, Shonn Miller (class of 2015) and David Onuorah (class of 2017) joined Kevin Ollie’s UConn program.  With Dan Hurley now in charge of the Huskies, it remains to be seen if Gettings will continue the recent Ithaca to Storrs pipeline.

(Update: According to a tweet from Ryan Silver, Gettings’ former AAU coach, several mid and high major programs have already expressed interest – Arizona, Auburn, Cal, Hawaii, Mississippi, Stanford, Texas Tech, Washington, Washington State, and UCSB.  Also, David Sisk at Rivals.com noted that Vanderbilt has contacted Gettings.)

Gettings and fellow junior Matt Morgan led the Big Red to a 6-8 conference record, a surprise fourth place finish in league play and the program’s first appearance in the postseason Ivy Tournament.  After Gettings’ disappointing news, Big Red fans will focus their interest on Morgan’s status in the upcoming NBA Draft.  After declaring for the draft a second time this April, the Ivy League’s three-time leading scorer was not one of 69 players invited to this week’s NBA Combine in Chicago.  He has until 11:59 p.m. on May 30 to remove his name from the draft and maintain his last year of eligibility.  If he does drop out, Cornell fans will then have to wait and see if he returns to the team for his senior year or decides to follow Gettings lead in saving his last season to play elsewhere.