With the clock ticking down and overtime likely, Cornell’s Jake Fiegen found a slight opening at the top of the arc and launched a last-second shot over the outstretched arm of senior forward Nick Townsend.
The senior guard’s triple hit nothing but the bottom of the net, leading the Big Red to a 72-69 upset of first-place Yale Friday night at Newman Arena.
Capping off the hard-fought victory, the boisterous Newman faithful stormed the court, showing their pride in a Cornell team that remains in the hunt for a spot in the Ivy League Tournament taking place on this same court in two weeks.
“We have such a great fanbase. Shoutout to the football team, shoutout to the everyone that was here,” senior guard Cooper Noard told ESPNU’s Derek Jones from courtside. “A super-special group they’ve got here tonight. I’m so proud of our fans, so proud of our team.”
The Big Red, which ended the Bulldogs’ five-game winning streak in the series, improved to 13-12 overall and 6-6 in the Ivy League, one game behind third-place Penn and one game ahead of fifth-place Dartmouth.
Yale, which saw its five-game winning streak come to a conclusion, fell to 21-5 on the season and 9-3 in the Ancient Eight. The Bulldogs remain at the top of the conference but fall into a tie with Harvard, which pulled out a two-point win at Princeton.
After getting blown out 103-88 in the first go around on Feb. 8, Cornell set the tone and got out to a hot start. Capitalizing on triples from Fiegen and Noard, as well as a dunk from senior guard Josh Baldwin, the hosts quickly went up 8-0.
The Bulldogs weren’t shooting well through most of the first half, but they kept the Big Red within six, 25-19, heading into the last few minutes.
At that point, Noard hit a reverse layup and followed it up with a three from the top of the key. On the next possession, he found a wide-open Adam Hinton at the right elbow, and the senior guard sank a three to extend the lead to 33-19.
A timeout called by Yale coach James Jones seemed to settle his team.
Sophomore forward Isaac Celiscar connected on a three from the left baseline, then sophomore guard Jordan Braithwaite stole the ball from Noard and took it himself for a slam dunk.
About a minute later, Townsend corralled an offensive rebound and bullied his way through three defenders to hit a layup and pick up the foul. The Chappaqua, N.Y. native, who missed last week’s contest due to a concussion, finished the old-fashioned three to get the deficit back to six.
Fiegen hit a fadeaway jumper inside the paint with under 10 seconds left, but sophomore forward Riley Fox followed that with a last-second triple to end the half with Cornell ahead 35-30.
Hinton hit back-to-back triples from the same spot on the left side to extend Cornell’s lead to 11 in the opening minute of the second half.
The Big Red were up 13, 56-43, when the Bulldogs went on an 11-0 run, punctuated by two acrobatic layups by senior guard Casey Simmons to make it a two-point game with just over nine minutes left in regulation.
Up three points two minutes later, Cornell went on to score eight of the next ten points with the mini-run capped by an and-one jumper in the lane from sophomore guard Anthony Nimani.
While things didn’t look good for Yale, down 67-59 with five minutes to go and facing a confident team buoyed by their energetic fan base, it wasn’t a surprise that the Bulldogs weren’t down for the count.
First, Braithwaite hit a driving layup. Then, junior guard Trevor Mullin stole the next possession and dished it to Simmons for the breakaway dunk.
Following a 1-for-2 effort from the line by Cornell junior forward Kaspar Sepp, Mullin attacked the hoop for a layup to make it a 69-65 contest.
Simmons blocked Sepp around the Big Red basket the next time down and finished the sequence with another layup.
Yale was still down two with less than ten seconds to go when Brathwaite found Townsend, who had been double and triple-teamed all night long, facing single coverage. The ball went into the Bulldogs’ leader, who converted the layup over Nimani.
Without any timeouts remaining, Baldwin rushed past midcourt, handed it off to Fiegen, and set a screen on Brathwaite to free him just enough space for the game-winning trey.
“Jake Fiegen is a special kid, always built for the moment,” Noard told ESPNU’s Noah Savage after the game. “We’re all so confident in him taking those shots, and he executed perfectly.”
With his game winning bucket, Fiegen finished with 17 points (12 in the second half) to go along with eight rebounds and four assists.
There were four other Cornell players scoring double digits with Noard netting 16 (14 in the first half), Baldwin adding 13, Nimani totaling 12 and Hinton putting in 11.
“We have so many guys that are capable of putting the ball in the basket,” Noard told the broadcasters. “We don’t care who scores. It doesn’t matter if it’s me, Jake, Adam, Josh, Jacob (Beccles) … Even when they’re physical like that, they can’t guard all five of us. Our confidence in each other and our trust in our teammates is what guides us.”
Townsend, Celiscar and Simmons each scored 14 in the losing effort, with Townsend also grabbing six rebounds and handing out five assists, while Celiscar had eight boards.
While the Big Red did well from inside the arc, shooting 12-for-19 (63.2%), they did their real damage from the outside, connecting on 14 of 35 attempts (40%).
On the defensive side, Cornell allowed Yale to go 21-of-40 (52.5%) from the inside, but they held the Elis to 7-for-20 (35.0%) from deep. That was almost two triples below their season average and 6.0% below its No. 2-in-the-nation field goal percentage.
In addition, the Big Red won the rebounding battle 31-28, held a 12-3 advantage in second chance points and limited Townsend, one of the frontrunners for Ivy League Player of the Year, to 30.8% (4-for-13) shooting from the field.
For the penultimate game on the regular season, Jon Jaques will bring his Cornell squad back to Newman to face Brown on Saturday night, while Yale takes the lengthy trip to Manhattan to battle Columbia.