Down 31-28 at the half, the shots just weren’t falling for Cornell men’s basketball at Newman Arena against Penn on Monday. When a team like the Big Red live and die with offense, 36% shooting wasn’t going to cut it against a Quakers squad that rolled Dartmouth by 29 in its conference opener.
But Cornell went on to make 10 triples in the second stanza as it defeated the visitors, 77-60.
Senior guard Chris Manon stuffed the stat sheet for the hosts — recording 16 points, eight rebounds and finishing with five helpers. He swatted a pair of shots and came up with four steals. Junior forward Guy Ragland Jr. had an efficient afternoon, scoring 16 points off 6-for-10 shooting in front of 1,462 at Newman. Senior guard Isaiah Gray and junior guard Nazir Williams each poured in 10 while senior forward Keller Boothby knocked down three triples.
Here’s are two things we learned after Cornell improved to 2-0 in the Ivy League:
The Big Red can actually win a game on defense
Surely, Cornell scored 49 points in the second half — the ultimate X-factor to its 12th victory of the season. But the Big Red took care of things on the defensive end, too.
Cornell allowed its lowest point total of the season — just 60 points.
Yes, Penn remained without senior guard Clark Slajchert, but the same squad dropped 80 on Dartmouth a week prior. The Red and Blue turned the ball over 17 times, many of which were because of errors handling Cornell’s full-court pressure and simply not playing at the same pace.
Penn shot 43% from the field and 36% from deep, even though it still hit 10 threes.
Cornell’s rotation is shrinking
Cornell, which has been known to have deep teams under Brian Earl, has narrowed down to a nine-man rotation. With Williams finally back in the starting lineup, sophomore DJ Nix, who previously started, is out of the rotation. Gray and Manon continue to start along with sophomore guard Cooper Noard and senior forward Sean Hansen, while Ragland, Boothby, sophomore forward AK Okereke and freshman guard Jake Fiegan come off the bench.
Earlier in the season, junior forward Chris Cain, sophomore guard Adam Tsang Hinton and freshman guard Jacob Beccles got regular looks, but they no longer exist in the rotation.
In Cornell’s win over Penn, Williams played 30 minutes. He played 32 the game before against Columbia, but had been at 30+ minutes just four times before. Gray played 30 minutes, the second-most of his career, and Manon tied his season high at 27 minutes.
Bottom line: Earl is zeroing in on a slightly smaller rotation and it’s working for now. We’ll see how well it holds as Ivy play progresses.