NEW HAVEN, Conn. – After two losses at home to start the Ivy League campaign, it was time for some soul-searching for the Cornell men’s basketball team, as the Big Red look to qualify for their fifth straight Ivy Madness, this time on their home floor.
However, for the last decade, Lee Amphitheater is not a terribly accommodating place to look for one’s soul and Saturday afternoon was no different as the stuttering Yale offense got healthy with a 102-68 pummeling of Cornell, the first time the Bulldogs broke the century mark in a Ivy home game since 1987. No, James Jones was not the helm then (shoutout to Dick Kuchen).
For Cornell (7-9, 0-3 Ivy) and second-year head coach Jon Jaques, the biggest issues are not hard to diagnose, the Big Red have given up more than 100 points in all three Ivy League games (now four straight against Division I competition), and are 352nd nationally in defensive efficiency, a number that got even worse with Yale (13-3, 2-1) posting a sizzling 1.44 points per possession.
“We’re obviously trying some different looks defensively to figure out what’s best for this particular group,” Jaques said. “We’re not the biggest team in the world. It’s a long Ivy League season and we just have to figure this out, hopefully quickly. A lot of times when you don’t get stops, it trickles down to the offense as well, and I think that’s happened to us the last couple games. You start to rush things and it gets worse.”
Defense has never been Cornell’s biggest strength in the modern era, which has seen them be extremely successful playing up tempo, it was only sixth in the Ivy in defensive efficiency last season on its way to the Ivy League final, which they were in against Yale until the final moments.
But with AK Okereke at Vanderbilt and Guy Ragland Jr. graduated, there has not been a replacement in the middle, and teams are getting to the rim at will. When Cornell does collapse, three-point shooters (of which the Ivy League has plenty) take their turn to feast.
Two years ago with Chris Manon (who finished 2023-24 fifth nationally in steal rate) and Isaiah Gray, Cornell finished 93rd in forcing turnovers (18.3%), but this season, the Big Red are all the way down in 320th (14.6%).
All of that was on display Saturday afternoon as Cornell brought plenty of energy as was able to match Yale shot for shot early with Jacob Beccles’ three-pointer giving the Big Red what turned out to be their last lead at 20-17 with 13:24 to go in the first half.
Jaques was so desperate on defense that he actually had his team in a zone to start the game, which led to target practice from the likes of Trevor Mullin, Riley Fox and Nick Townsend. Yale struggled mightily shooting against both Brown and Princeton, but made it look easy Saturday in the first half, not only shooting 8-for-15 from three, but 14-for-16 inside the arc with only two turnovers.
“They made a lot of shots they were missing against Princeton. It happens,” Jaques said. “They’re a really good team and the defending champions. They also made a few tough ones and they got more confident and loose and it became tough for us.”
Yale led 88-50 at the midpoint of the second half and the rest was academic, with Jaques trying to keep his team’s confidence up for a huge game at Brown Monday afternoon.
“We were able to play off their double teams, and our guys were unselfish today,” Yale coach James Jones said. “Then it becomes a shooting drill, and I like our chances when we can get it like that.”
Although Cornell sits at the bottom of the Ivy League at 0-3, all is obviously not lost in a season that has already seen some unexpected results. Seniors Cooper Noard and Jake Fiegen (who led the Big Red in scoring again Saturday) have shown they can put up points quickly and they are flanked by Beccles and senior Adam Hinton. But none of them are physical rim presences and Jacques actually went to 6-foot-5 Josh Baldwin at center (his first start of the season) in place of 6-foot-7 Valparaiso transfer Kaspar Sepp, who is Cornell’s top rebounder, but has a block rate of 0.4% (Baldwin checks in at a team-high 3.1%).
All this seems pretty bleak for Cornell going forward, but let’s remember how unorthodox it plays already and that it’s still; 18th nationally in effective field goal percentage nationally, even after Saturday. Jaques knows he doesn’t have to produce a defensive juggernaut, he just needs to get enough stops to let his offense do what they do.
Only time will tell if they will, or if Cornell will be the third straight host school (and fourth in five years since COVID) to fail to qualify for the Ivy League Tournament.
“We just have to play the Cornell basketball that has been successful: share it, fly up the court, be unselfish, and obviously fight defensively and make things a little tougher for the other team,” Jaques said.