PROVIDENCE, R.I. – After Friday night’s tough loss at Yale, Cornell first-year head coach Jon Jaques lamented that if a break or two had gone his team’s way down the stretch, the final result might have been different.
Sure enough, less than 24 hours later, in an even bigger spot for the Big Red at a Brown team they were tied with in the Ivy League standings, there they were in the closing minutes with the game in the balance.
This time, though, Cornell was the team that got the bounces and executed down the stretch, punctuated by AK Okereke’s massive block on Kino Lilly Jr. with only five seconds remaining, as Cornell escaped the Pizzitola Sports Center with an 85-81 win, snapping a three-game losing streak and avenging an earlier season loss in Ithaca.
“Sometimes both teams deserve to win,” Jaques said. “That’s how I felt (Friday), we played well enough to win, Yale is just really good, so it evens out, I guess. I thought Brown played well enough to win tonight, Kino probably gets that shot off at the end seven times out of 10, we’ve seen him do that a lot in his career, but AK just made a play when we needed it.”
Like they did Friday night at Yale, Cornell came out firing, although this time it was Cooper Noard who had the hot hand, with the Big Red making 6 of their first 10 three-pointers to race to a 27-15 lead just eight minutes in. But Cornell would go just 6-for-26 from beyond the arc the rest of the way, and the outcome relied mostly on guts as Brown battled back, just as Yale had the night before.
Malcolm Wrisby-Jefferson’s layup with 9:27 left in the game finally gave Brown a 69-68 lead (that would be its only lead), but Guy Ragland Jr. immediately answered with a three, and although both teams had pushed tempo to that point, the contest became a physical slog the rest of the way. Lilly (13 points, 11 assists) struggled most of the game from the field, shooting just 6-for-20, but his jumper tied the game at 79-79 with 2:58 remaining.
But the Bears (13-11, 5-6) would only get two points the rest of the way. Lilly discarded a defender and got a wide-open look at a three with his team trailing 81-79 with 1:20 left, but it rimmed out.
A key 10-second violation and a Cornell (14-10, 6-5) shot clock violation on its next possession gave Brown another chance. It had the ball down 83-81 with 10.6 seconds left, and Lilly drove straight to the basket, only to see Okereke fly over from the weak side and slam it off the backboard. Cornell got the loose ball and victory was theirs, as well as a giant step toward returning for the Ivy League Tournament in three weeks. Cornell closes with three home games and will be heavily favored in two (Penn and Columbia, Princeton is the other). But they will not be partying or planning their return trip quite yet.
It didn’t take long for Brown coach Mike Martin to point out the key number on the box score. Cornell, which entered 302nd nationally in offensive rebounding (although it did have 16 Friday against Yale), finished with 21 Saturday, an even 50% of its misses. That allowed the Big Red to post 1.20 points per possession even on a relatively poor shooting night.
“The story of the game was our inability to get stops,” Martin said. “We hold them to 40 percent shooting, but we give up 21 offensive rebounds. It’s hard to win against anyone when you give up that many offensive rebounds, but especially when we really wanted to get out in transition, and when we got defensive rebounds, we were able to, but it didn’t happen enough.”
Said Jaques: “It (offensive rebounding) was not a point of emphasis at all, to be honest. Just the guys wanting it. It’s not something we even talk about too much, but these guys are used to winning and making plays. Even our young guys like Jacob Beccles and Adam Hinton were flying in there and getting offensive rebounds. It was just dudes making plays and wanting the ball.”
All 10 starters scored in double figures, with Noard (who was 0-for-7 from three Friday) leading the way for Cornell with 23 and Guy Ragland shaking off a poor statistical performance against Yale to score 19 with 8 rebounds and 5 assists. Okereke had just 10 points, but did have 6 assists and 3 blocks.
“They started the game fast and they never really slowed down,” Martin said. “We worked really hard and fought like crazy to get back and took that one lead, but they took it right back. It was tied with three minutes to go, and they won the game in the last three minutes. They deserve all kinds of credit, their response after the weekend they had last weekend was amazing. They played great last night even though they didn’t win and you saw today (Saturday).”
For Brown, Landon Lewis continued his stellar play with a team-high 20 points. The Bears shot 28-for-48 (58.3%) from inside the arc, but were just 5-for-21 from outside (1-for-14 outside AJ Lesburt’s 4-for-7, including just 1-for-9 from Lilly).
The Bears will go to Harvard and Dartmouth next weekend before finishing at home against a Yale team that has already clinched the top seed in Ivy Madness, so all is not lost. But their road back to the postseason became much, much harder with Saturday’s defeat.