Download Report

CCWW Sports Report No. 219
(January 29, 2015)
by
Rich Coyle ‘68
Cornell Alumni/ae Sports Update.
I thought I’d start this week’s report off in a different place—Cornell alums making news in the sports
world. While I must begin, as usual, by telling you what you already know—that the Seattle Seahawks
and Bryan Walters ’10 will be playing in the Super Bowl this Sunday—this section was actually inspired
by two other items I came across this past weekend. First, January 25 was the first day in office for Rob
Manfred ’80 as Commissioner of Baseball. Rob sent out a nice open letter that day
(http://m.mlb.com/news/article/107424384/new-mlb-commissioner-rob-manfreds-letter-to-fans) and then
set off an internet firestorm by suggesting that he would consider new rules to cut down on or eliminate
defensive shifts.
Another Cornellian making news off the playing
field (but not much off the playing field) is Sarah
Spain ’02. Sarah was an outstanding student and
athlete on the Hill, co-captain of the Women’s
Track & Field team her senior year and a member
of the 400 Club. For the past five years she has
been a reporter and anchor for ESPN. On
Saturday, she started a new challenge, co-hosting
a program on ESPN radio called “Spain and Prim,”
which ESPN calls one of the first national sports
radio shows to be hosted and produced by women.
Sarah apparently also found time to attend Super
Bowl media day and mingle with her fellow
Cornellian, B-Walt, as shown in this Instagram
photo she tweeted.
Another former Cornell athlete with a new job is former Big Red quarterback Jeff Mathews ’14, who just
signed with Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the Canadian Football League where he will be reunited with wide
receiver Luke Tasker ’13 and their former Cornell head coach, Kent Austin.
Oh, and did I mention that Bryan Walters and the Seattle Seahawks will be playing in the Super Bowl this
Sunday? Their opponents will be the New England Patriots (Boo! Hiss!). The team formerly known as
“the Patsies” have had “issues” since their AFC championship win over the Colts. Well, leave it to
another Cornellian to sort out that mess. According to an article in the Washington Post, William Nye ‘77
a/k/a “Bill Nye the Science Guy” listened to Bill Belichick the football guy give a science-y explanation for
how the New England Patriots’ footballs became deflated last week and offered the following analysis:
“What he said didn’t make any sense.”
Watch Party
A few Cornell hockey and basketball games are making it to what we used to call “the small screen” and
the CCWW is having a viewing party at the Attic—a very good venue, BTW—on February 14 at 4:00 p.m.,
-1-
PST. Watch the Big Red while wearing Red and you’ll already have the appropriate colors on for your VD
dinner.
The Week in Cornell Sports
All in all, this was a pretty good week. Each of the Big Five winter spectator sports snared at least one
victory and Wrestling got two. So here we go.
Men’s Basketball. Results: Beat Columbia 57-47. Season record: 9-9; Ivy Record 1-1.
Analysis and Prognosis. Men’s Basketball gets top billing this week. If last week’s home loss to the
same Columbia Lions was maddening, this game showed the potential the Big Red have. Basically, the
difference from a week ago is that this week Cornell’s “Big Three” seniors—Shonn Miller ’15, Devin
Cherry ’15 and Galal Cancer ’15—shot at a 50% clip (18 for 26) rather than 21% (6 for 28, including a
horrendous 1 for 12 on treys). The same suffocating defense that the Red has shown most of the year
was there, and although the turnover ratio was not nearly as much in the Big Red’s favor as it was last
week, in this game the Red took three fewer shots and made nine more baskets. Miller had an especially
strong game at both ends of the court, scoring 18 points with a couple of assists and no turnovers and
blocking four shots and picking up eight defensive rebounds. I still think Shonn spends too much time
away from the basket (He took six threes and got only one offensive rebound) but I’ll take this
performance any week. Cancer also had a strong game, scoring 16 points overall, including nine points
during a 13-6 late Cornell run that put the game away. Galal made four strong moves to the basket for
layups and put the ball in the hoop each time.
I did not make it to NYC for the game but my old college friend and classmate, Gregg Morris ’68, who
played some good hoops “back in the day” (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_magX206klWM/S6kFjCNuJI/AAAAAAAATFQ/-if-JcIEPTA/s1600-h/Cornell+Kentucky+History-2.jpg. ) was in the house and seems to
have been a good luck charm for the Big Red. The Red now have four straight home games—Brown
(whose top scorer just left the team) and Yale this weekend and Penn and Princeton the following
weekend. Yale will be tough but Cornell has a better RPI than any of the other three.
Women’s Basketball. Results: Beat Columbia 46-42. Season record: 11-5; Ivy Record 2-0.
Analysis and Prognosis. This was not nearly the dominant performance of a week ago—in fact, the Big
Red trailed most of the way before taking the lead with a late 11-0 run and then held on for the victory
when the Lions missed a tying layup with three seconds left. Nia Marshall ’17 got into some foul trouble
and had a very quiet day, but Nicholle Aston ’17 picked up the slack with a double-double (14 points and
10 boards) and got an Ivy POW for her troubles. And, you know what, a win is a win! The Red now hit
the road for four straight games, including one on Super Bowl Sunday morning against Ivy co-leader Yale
that will be televised in select markets (but apparently not in Seattle).
Men’s Hockey. Results: Beat Harvard 3-2, Lost to Dartmouth 5-2. Season record: 8-9-2.
Analysis and Prognosis. Snatching disappointment from the jaws of exhilaration, the Red followed up
their great win over No. 4 Harvard on Friday before a sellout crowd at Lynah with a thud against
Dartmouth the next night so heavy that if the game were outdoors they’d have fallen through the ice.
Friday’s win showed all that the Red is capable of: solid goaltending by Mitch Gillam ’17, who now leads
the nation in save percentage and goals-against average, some timely offense from Cole Bardreau ’15,
who scored Cornell’s first goal, assisted on the game-winner and was on the ice for all three Big Red
goals, and Christian Hilbrich ’16, who scored the second goal and started the play that led to the game
winner, and another clutch goal from Eric Freschi ’17, who netted the winner with just 41 seconds left.
But as good as Friday was, Saturday was just about as bad. Dartmouth took a 4-0 lead as Hayden
Stewart ’18 had a rough night, letting in four goals on 15 shots in 30 minutes of action, before being
pulled for Gillam. On the bright side, once Mitch came in, things settled down, Cornell scored a couple of
-2-
goals and Dartmouth was shut down, save an empty-netter in final seconds. Bardreau got another goal
and Matt Buckles ’17 scored to tie Hilbrich for the team lead with six goals.
To put the best spin on the weekend, the Red demonstrated (a) that it can score a few goals and the
people who can generate that offense—Bardreau, Buckles, Hilbrich, Freschi, Jake Weidner ‘17, Jeff
Kubiak ‘17, Joakim Ryan ’15 and maybe a few others—are beginning to step forward; and (b) when
Gillam is in the net, opponents will not score many goals. Thus, losing record notwithstanding, the Red
are still capable of going deep into the post-season if they can get there.
Women’s Hockey. Results: Beat Dartmouth 2-1, Lost to Harvard 3-0. Season record: 10-7-3.
Analysis and Prognosis. Even though the Big Red lost for the first time in over two months, it’s hard to
get much negative out of the weekend since the Red were so short-handed. Against the Big Green,
Cornell only dressed 13 skaters and were missing two-thirds of the Jenner-Saulnier-Fulton line. The next
night against Harvard, Emily Fulton ’15 was back in the line-up, although perhaps not at full tilt, but Jill
Saulnier ’15, injured in the Yale game, was still out, along with Hanna Bunton ’17. Cornell now has
home games against Union and RPI and a mid-week trip to Colgate, none of whom are very good, before
traveling to Quinnipiac, which is good, next Friday.
Wrestling. Results: Beat Penn 26-9, Beat Lehigh 21-9. Season record: 10-1 in dual meets.
Analysis and Prognosis. Cornell took care of the two next best teams in EIWA last weekend although the
matches were closer than the meet scores might suggest—like Electoral College landslides composed of
close victories in individual states. If Penn had four additional regulation time points in three matches,
they win 18-17. Ditto for the Lehigh match, where two more points in two matches and no late reversal by
Brian Realbuto ’17 and Lehigh would have had the 18-12 victory.
The Red are getting healthier and better. The six losses, all by regular decisions, came at 133 and 141 in
both meets, where the Red is using fill-ins, at heavyweight, which has been a problem all year (although
Jacob Aiken-Phillips ’15 did pick up his first win of the calendar year on Saturday before losing in
overtime on Sunday), and an odd loss by Chris Villalonga ’14 at 149 to a lower-ranked Penn wrestler.
Everyone else won twice, the big winners being top-ranked Gabe Dean ’17, who beat the Nos. 3 and 5
ranked wrestlers at 184, and Jace Bennett ’15, who for the second straight week beat a higher-ranked
wrestler at 197 (and moved up a spot to No. 13 nationally). Realbuto also moved up a spot in the 157
rankings to No. 6.
Other Sports
Continuing to catch people up on other teams or individuals doing noteworthy things, this week we’ll talk
about two women’s sports—Fencing and Gymnastics.
Fencing: Their record is 14-4 entering Ivy League play, same as it was year ago, against essentially the
same competition. But the Big Red have a rising star in Epeeist Victoria Wines ’17. Victoria finished 5th
of 111 fencers in the Junior Women’s Epee at the North American Cup in Salt Lake City in early January.
In dual meets, Wines is 30-7.
Gymnastics: The team has not made much noise in meets yet but two freshmen have earned ECAC
weekly honors. For w/e January 11, Joy Gage ’18 was named rookie of the week after scoring a 9.775
on the beam in a quad meet against Penn State, UNH and Pitt, the highest ECAC score in all events that
week. Two weeks later, Courtney Spitzer ’18 took specialist of the week honors after she “recorded the
highest ECAC beam score in the ECAC on beam for the second week in a row.”
That’s all for now. GO SEAHAWKS! GO BIG RED!
-3-