Orange Walk-Ons Pumped For Playing Time As SU Faces Cornell
The Orange look to continue its hot start Wednesday night when they host the defending Ivy League champs. A win over Cornell would give SU its first 8-0 start since the 2001-02 season. You can think of Cornell as the Washington Generals to SU’s Harlem Globetrotters, as the ‘Cuse has won the last 30 meetings dating back to Jim Boeheim’s first season on the sidelines.
Barring any surprises, expect this game to be a laugher at least on the level of the Colgate game, as Ivy League schools do not award athletic scholarships. But hey, their RPI is higher than Louisville’s, not to mention Providence and Rutgers. Score one for the “Big East is overrated” crowd.
The most notable player for Cornell is 7′0 sophomore Jeff Foote, who comes in averaging 13.9 points, 7.7 boards and 3.6 blocks per game. Alex Woodhouse of Colgate, who is four inches shorter, posted a whopping seven blocks as a Dome visitor Monday night, so avoiding similar embarrassment is high on the Orange’s checklist, just above making sure everyone who suits up gets playing time and tracking Paul Harris’s performance sans corn rows. Mookie Jones should get a nice percentage of minutes for the second straight game once the Orange builds a firm cushion.
Outside of Foote, Cornell has a few scorers in Ryan Wittman, Louis Dale and Geoff Reeves. Wittman, Reeves and Foote each average more than ten a game, but Dale, the reigning Ivy League Player of the year, will be a game-time decision and has yet to play this season. After that, the numbers drop rather heavily. There’s no major rebounding threat apart from Foote, so look for another big night on the glass for SU.
You might look at the Big Red’s schedule and notice a decent showing on the road against Indiana, keeping things interesting until the Hoosiers pulled away in the second half. Don’t let that deceive you, because Indiana has just nine scholarship players and returned only two players from last season. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for Cornell brushing two of D-1’s three Loyolas aside this early into the season.
