Isaiah Gray

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – You don’t have to squint very hard to see that not much has changed at Cornell this season.

Brian Earl has moved on to William & Mary, and some of the key figures that helped the Big Red to their best record since the magical 2009-10 Sweet 16 campaign have moved on. But Cornell went with the if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it route in hiring Jon Jacques to replace Earl, and the early results have been somewhat encouraging.

The Big Red suffered a somewhat frustrating 82-72 loss at the JMA Wireless Dome (yes, it’s not the Carrier Dome anymore) that saw them jump out to a double-digit lead and battle back on several occasions, but go just 12-for-40 from behind the arc. Cornell has been losing at Syracuse since before the Dome was even built, of course. This was the Big Red’s 44th straight loss to the Orange, dating all the way back to 1968.

The 40 three-point attempts obviously stand out to the uninitiated, but that’s the way Cornell has rolled, having somewhat stumbled upon it during the COVID pandemic (as you probably know, there was no 2020-21 Ivy basketball season). Cornell went from 314th to 15th nationally in adjusted tempo, subbing and shooting transition threes at will. The Big Red have not missed a Ivy League Tournament since.

This season is a big test for Cornell’s tempo-fueled system. Jacques played four years at Cornell, and his senior season was 2009-10. While Jacques’ teams went 45-9 in the Ivy League, Steve Donahue’s style was not about pushing tempo, although those squads were perhaps the most efficient and best shooting Ivy offenses of all time. But Jacques worked closely with Earl the last few seasons, and so here we are.

The transition hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. Cornell did have a bad home loss to Robert Morris in which it gave up 1.18 points per possession and 15-for-25 shooting from two-point range. Pressing as much as the Big Red do is going to allow some easy baskets and they did under Earl, but how much is too much?

After missing 14 of its first 15 shots Wednesday night (and falling behind 14-2 and 20-11), Syracuse – not a good shooting team by most standards – continually got to the rim. Even with the dreadful start and average three-point shooting, the Orange still finished at 1.08 points per possession, largely due to the fact that Cornell was only able to force six turnovers. The counter to that, of course, is that there might not be an Ivy League team that can dominate inside at the moment anyway. Yale, maybe?

“I know they had a couple of guys struggling shooting coming in and they were bound to break out,” Jacques said. “They’re too good. They made some hard shots and slowed us down more than we want. We got a little stagnant, we want to push pace. We had a few possessions where we didn’t get the looks we wanted.”

Cornell leads the nation in getting shots up quickly, averaging just 13.8 seconds per possession. It has finished in the top five in that category in every season since COVID and has not finished outside the top 16 in three-pointers taken since then. So those are givens, baked into the formula. The questions are always about gives and takes.

“It’s certainly intentional to take that many threes if that’s what we’re given,” Jacques said. “We have confidence playing that way and we’ve had success. It’s been good to us. When the ball is going in, it looks great. Not quite enough tonight. In the first half, that stretch (an extended 28-8 run) when their lead grew, our offense struggled.”

And the players, of course. Chris Manon (who seemed to do a little of everything), Isaiah Gray, Sean Hansen and Keller Boothby all graduated, but the beauty of Cornell’s system is with so many players getting in games, there is always experience returning.

Nazir Williams has the most experience, now a senior, he managed 16 points Wednesday despite going 1-for-7 from behind the arc. Williams shot 41.1% from three as a sophomore, but is at just 17% early this season. Cornell will need him to shoot better, even if there is a lot more attention on him these days.

A big key in the Cornell system is also having big men who can hoist. The Big Red have two in senior Guy Ragland Jr. and junior AK Okereke. Ragland hit five threes against Syracuse and led the Big Red with 17 points. Ragland has fared much better than Okereke in rebounding numbers this season.

Jake Fiegen and Cooper Noard are the other two starters. They can both shoot, but can they apply the defensive intensity of their predecessors is a question going forward. Cornell’s system is dependent on forcing some turnovers, right now the Big Red are 248th nationally, and if they aren’t getting defensive rebounds (somewhat a given with their style) and not getting turnovers, it makes things very difficult.

“We started playing a zone a little to try to slow them down, but then that slowed us down, too,” Jacques said. “They also picked it apart as well. We couldn’t get any rebounds. I’m proud of the guys for getting it within 4 late in the second half, we almost got it to 2. It’s hard to keep taking punches when you don’t get rebounds.”

Senior Ryan Kiachian, junior DJ Nix, and sophomore Jacob Neccles have gotten the most minutes off the bench, and as we’ve established, Cornell is going to need all of them to be successful.

Despite the coaching change and the departures, the cupboard is certainly not bare for Cornell, who seems to have a good chance to qualify for their fourth straight Ivy League Tournament if it can iron out some minor issues.

Variance hasn’t worked out for them in Ivy Madness the last few seasons, with a pair of semifinal losses to Yale and one to Princeton. But maybe this is the year.

“The league is really good and every team is competitive,” Jacques said. “We’re just trying to inch forward game by game and play a little better every night, Colgate is next. We’re excited for the challenge.”