As Steve pointed out, last weekend was a great time to be a ‘Cuse fan. The football team cranked out a solid victory over Rutgers on Senior Day, and the basketball team put to rest all sour grapes over losing out on Tobias Harris by stomping a pair of ranked teams on consecutive days in front of a national television audience and vaulted all the way to the top ten. The leap from 24th to 10th is the third largest in the history of the AP poll and on Tuesday night, the Orange returns home from their triumphant weekend to face the Cornell Big Red at the Dome.

The 2009 Ivy League champs put the Orange in a deep hole last season, but not deep enough, as SU rallied from a 16-point deficit to dodge the upset. That game is probably better remembered for the 3-point clinic that Ryan Wittman put on. Wittman went absolutely ballistic, putting up 33 points on 12-28 shooting and canning nine treys. He’s back at it this year, with an 11-27 mark from long range over the first three games of the season, especially contributing in a big way against Alabama.

Senior Louis Dale is another player to watch out for. The second leading scorer on the team, Dale is equally capable as Wittman of catching fire. The Orange has a robust advantage in size down low, so the focus will be shutting down Cornell’s three point shooters.

The Big Red will need another scorching night from Wittman, as well as Dale and Chris Wroblewski, to stand a chance in this one. SU’s airtight zone defense is allowing its opponents to shoot just 35.7% from the floor and 24.1% from behind the three point line. Cornell is catching SU at the worst possible time – at home, coming off two of the biggest November victories a team could have. Given SU’s expected dominance in the back of the zone, I can’t see this one being close if Cornell shoots less than 40% from three.

In previous years, I’d be a little leery of the Orange getting too comfortable with their egos as inflated by rankings, thus becoming vulnerable to a team like Cornell, but the unselfish nature of this team leads me to believe otherwise. The spotlight shines a target on SU’s back, so there can’t be any letting up. I look for the Orange to use this opportunity to tune up their rebounding and regain some confidence on that front and for the perimeter defense to shine in another test.

There probably won’t be a recap of this one due to the holiday coming up, so I wish everyone a *tremendous* Thanksgiving filled with great times spent with family and starchy goodness.

Prediction: SU 89, Cornell 65.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 1:07 am by Brian G. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.