It shouldn’t be a surprise at this point that Brian Earl has Cornell men’s basketball off to a hot start.
After an impressive road victory over the Fordham Rams of the Atlantic 10 on Saturday, the Big Red are 3-0 for the second time in the last three seasons. They opened up with an 84-78 win at Lehigh, who was picked second in the Patriot League. Two days later, Cornell cruised to a victory at home over Division III SUNY Morrisville.
On Dec. 22, 2019, Cornell blew a 15-point lead to Hartford and lost, 80-76. That was the last time the Big Red have lost a nonconference game to a mid-major opponent. Jimmy Boeheim was a junior at the time and Hartford was still a Division I program.
Since that loss, Earl has transformed Cornell’s attack into a high-tempo Princeton offense, and the team has been nearly flawless in the early months of the three seasons since.
Earl has focused on buttoning up the defensive end after Cornell finished 277th in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency metric last year. A week into the season, the team ranks 185th — middle of the road, but much better than 2022-23. A lot of that comes from holding Fordham, a team that finished third in the A10 last season, to just 24 first-half points.
A pleasant surprise has been sophomore guard Cooper Noard. After playing just 75 total minutes last season, the Glenview, Ill. native is leading the team at 13.7 points per game off scorching 10-for-21 three-point shooting. With Greg Dolan off to Loyola-Chicago for his graduate season, someone needed to fill the void on offense, and Noard has done that so far.
Junior guard Nazir Williams is back in midseason form in two games off the bench. While he didn’t play against Morrisville, Williams is averaging 11 points per outing and has missed just five times from the field. Senior forward Sean Hansen is averaging 12.7 points and notched 25 to lead the way in the season opener. Senior guard Isaiah Gray, while at just seven points per game, is continuing to make winning plays that don’t show up on the stat sheet.
Cornell’s schedule doesn’t let up in the coming weeks. The Big Red head to George Mason on Wednesday for the second of consecutive A10 games before heading to Florida for the Jacksonville Classic. They start by playing California State Fullerton before taking on Southern Mississippi or Utah Valley a day later. An early-season back-to-back can’t hurt things either, especially for a squad that lost five of its last seven Ivy League games.
Cornell has games against Syracuse and Baylor later in its slate, but fans should have a better reading of where this Big Red squad is at in about a week.