Indiana 72, Cornell 57.

Andy Bernard no doubt had a relapse during this one, which amounts to IU's best win of the year. Cornell has nothing approaching Big Ten talent, but won the Ivy League last season with a perfect record and is favored to win again. My pregame concern was in part based on ignorance: I didn't realize that two of Cornell's best players were injured and unavailable. I also didn't expect Verdell Jones to miss the last 30 minutes of the game after being knocked cold by a (clean) Cornell screen. (By the way, I hope it was out-of-state students booing the Cornell player in question, Jeff Foote. I would like to think that native Hoosiers would recognize the excellence and appropriateness of that screen).

Here are the stats. This was a 68-possession game, and so IU generally is playing a bit faster than last season's much more talented team. Cornell's vaunted offense played a horrible game. The Big Red shot 33 percent from the field and managed only 9 offensive rebounds. Ryan Wittman scored 28 points for Cornell, but he needed 22 shots to do it, and was only 8-22 from the field. Even that less-than-efficient performance was above average compared to his teammates. IU, in the meantime, shot over 55 percent from the field, 79 percent from the line, and was more effective than usual on the boards. Tom Pritchard excelled: he scored 23 points on 7-7 from the field and 9-13 from the line. IU's rebounds were well-distributed. The bad news? Turnover problems continued, and against a team not known for its defense. IU turned the ball over on nearly 30 percent of its possession, second-worst on the season after the St. Joseph's game. Most importantly, IU finished strong. After blowing big leads against IUPUI and Chaminade, it was encouraging to see IU finish an opponent that was on the ropes.

In sum, IU played reasonably well against a tall but not particularly aggressive team. This doesn't give me much hope that IU will be competitive in upcoming games against Wake Forest, Gonzaga, and Kentucky, but this was IU's most complete effort of the season, and so I'll take it.

The Cornell game.

Cornell Big Red
Current record: 4-2
Current RPI: 135
Current Sagarin: 127
Current Pomeroy: 103
2007-08 record: 22-6 (lost to Stanford in first round of NCAA Tournament)
2007-08 RPI: 67
2007-08 Sagarin: 113
2007-08 Pomeroy: 135
Series: first meeting
Pomeroy gameplan
TV: 4 pm, BTN

IU returns to the mainland with what could be a really tough game against Cornell, the defending Ivy League champion. Last season, Cornell went 21-5 and lost to Stanford in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. The Big Red were one of the most efficient offensive teams in the country last year. They were #37 in the nation in offensive efficiency, averaging over 1.1 points per possession, and shot 40.2 from three point range (#7 in the nation) and 52.6 percent from two point rsange (#32 nationally). They shot 76 percent from the line, #10 nationally.

The Cornell Basketball blog has an impressive amount of coverage of this one. The Athlon preview noted in this post shows that the Big Red return three all-Ivy selections from last season, including Ryan Wittman, a first team all-conference player who is the son of former IU great Randy Wittman. Witman is about 10 percent off his 43 percent career three point average, but certainly he will be looking forward to playing on his dad's old homecourt.

So far, Cornell has lost to St. John's and Siena and has wins over South Dakota, the Loyolas of Maryland and Chicago, and Eastern Michigan. Cornell has continued to shoot well, but isn't a great rebounding team. On paper, this looks like a challenging post-Hawaii matchup for the Hoosiers, who have been overmatched by both major opponents and competitive with some low major or worse programs.