With Manhattan experiencing Ithaca-like frigidity on Saturday afternoon, the visiting Cornell men’s basketball team felt right at home and used that wintry familiarity to dominate Columbia, 88-67, at Levien Gymnasium.
The win was even more impressive given that the Big Red (11-10, 4-4 Ivy), which averaged 13.8 three-pointers a game, only managed to connect on six triples.
After losing three straight to open the Ivy League season, Jon Jaques’ squad has won four of its last five to get to .500 in conference play and remains in the mix for a spot in the Ivy League Tournament that will take place at Newman Arena.
There is historical precedent, since the Big Red earned the No. 4 seed in 2018 after starting off the Ancient Eight slate at 0-3.
On the other side of the court, Kevin Hovde’s Lions (14-8, 3-5), which beat Cornell on the opening day of the conference season, dropped their second in a row and fifth of their last seven.
While Columbia presently sits in seventh place, there is only one game that separates the Light Blue from the upper half of the league.
The Big Red opened up a 10-point lead by the under eight-minute media timeout, but the Lions reduced it to three, 32-29, with just over two minutes to go.
Cornell recovered and finished the half scoring 10 of the last 13 points, including an old-fashioned three from senior guard Cooper Noard and a traditional triple from senior guard Corbin Zentner over a 22-second span, to head into the locker up 42-32.
Columbia opened up the second half with a set play that allowed senior guard Kenny Noland to get a quick layup, but any hope the Lions had at getting back into the game was quickly dashed as the Big Red went on to score 11 points.
Jaques’ group eventually expanded its advantage to 26 points, 72-46, with a little over nine minutes left in regulation and never let the game get any closer than 20 the rest of the way.
Senior guard Josh Baldwin, 6-foot-5 and playing down low against the Lions’ bigs, was the star of the game with a career-high 19 points, featuring a 4-for-9 performance from the field and an 11-for-12 effort from the line, as well as a career-tying 10 rebounds, including four on the offensive side.
“So happy for Josh, even when he was injured (missing all of 2023-24 and all but five games in 2024-25 due to injuries), he was such an important part of our team,” Jacques told Lance Medow of ESPN+ immediately after the contest. “He’s such a tough, skilled, obviously undersized bigger guy, but he’s a hard matchup since he’s one of the better athletes in the league.”
Three other seniors scored in double-digits for the Big Red, with guard Adam Hinton scoring 13, Noard adding 12 and Jake Fiegen totaling 11.
Noland put in a game-high 21 points for Columbia and first-year Connor Igoe was the only other Lion to make it to double digits with 13.
Typically, a Cornell victory is highlighted by its offense, but the defense played a key role in Saturday’s victory.
The Lions entered the game with an average rebounding margin of 7.5 per game, but the much smaller Red lineup ended up +10 on the glass (35-25) with an 11-rebound advantage (21-10) in the second half.
The undersized Cornellians also managed to hold the taller Lions into 47.2% (17-for-36) effort from two.
While those numbers were key, perhaps the most impactful results came from the pressure defense that forced Columbia into 15 turnovers, 11 of which came from Big Red steals, igniting a transition offense that converted those Lions’ lapses into 26 points.
“We’re improving defensively. We’ve obviously come a long way since the 0-3 start,” Jaques said during his courtside postgame interview. “We’re the smallest team in the league, probably by far, so we’re just leaning into it. It can be a strength for us if we use it and think about it in the right way.”
In addition to that huge number of points off turnovers, Cornell compensated for its lack of three-point prowess by making hay from attacking Columbia on the inside.
The Big Red managed to get to the free throw line early and often, using a perfect 13-for-13 run in the opening half to open the double-digit lead and a 9-for-11 effort in the second half to keep the Lions at bay.
When the team was not getting to the charity stripe, Cornell was finding similar success from the field, using unselfish play to secure 25 assists (83.3% assist rate) and find open players down low for 64.9% (24-for-37) shooting from two.
Cornell looks to break up the logjam in the middle of the conference pack when it heads to Princeton (8-15, 4-4) for a Friday night matchup followed by a Saturday contest at Penn (11-10, 4-4), while Columbia will play the Ps in the reverse order.