News and Notes: Monday Edition

Below, some news and notes for Monday...

• Basketball Prospectus is yet another site using a computer model to rank teams and places Cornell No. 196 out of 345 in the preseason ranking.

• The Syracuse blog, Nunes Magician, speculates that the Orange will still likely attempt to schedule Cornell annually even with Syracuse's pending move to the ACC. 

• Hoosier Tracker keeps tabs on Indiana natives playing Division I basketball and writes, "Errick Peck ( Cathedral ) spent most of last year in street clothes nursing a knee injury. As a Sophomore the Ivy leaguer averaged 11 ppg and 3.6 rpg while playing 23 minutes a game. Cornell loses their top two scorer from last year, so Peck will have the chance to step back in a make a difference."

• The Ithaca Journal recaps the Ivy League Preseason Media Poll:

ITHACA — A year after finishing fifth in the Ivy League standings with a 7-7 conference record, the Cornell men’s basketball team was picked to finish one place better in the 2012 Ivy League Preseason media poll, announced on Thursday.

The Big Red, which returns 10 of its top 12 scorers from last season, received 80 points for fourth place in the poll, voted on by local and national media representatives.

Princeton, last year’s league runner-up, was the near-unanimous preseason favorite, picking up 16 of the 17 first-place votes and 134 total points. Defending champion Harvard collected the lone remaining first-place vote and was second with 109 points, while Columbia was third.

Under Coach Bill Courtney, who is entering his third year on East Hill, Cornell improved its win totals both overall and in Ivy League play in 2011-12 from the previous year, finishing 12-16 overall.

Gone from last year’s squad are guards Chris Wroblewski and Drew Ferry, the team’s top two scorers last year at 11.5 and 11.3 points per game, respectively. Wroblewski graduated as the program’s all-time leader in assists and the school’s 13th 1,000-point scorer.

The Big Red return last year’s Ivy League Rookie of the Year in forward Shonn Miller (8.9 ppg.) and honorable mention All-Ivy senior guard Johnathan Gray (8.8 ppg.), as well as senior forward Errick Peck, back after missing the entire 2011-12 campaign with a knee injury.

“We feel like we have some depth and that’s going to give us the ability to do some things we want to do, particularly on the defensive end of the floor,” Courtney said during Thursday’s Ivy League preseason media teleconference. “So we’re excited. We’re hoping that some guys that didn’t get a chance to play as much last year, or guys that did, step up their game another level so that we’re ready to compete.”

Cornell opens its season on Nov. 10 at Newman Arena against Western Michigan. The Big Red faces a rugged out-of-conference schedule that includes games at Wisconsin (Nov. 18), Arizona State (Nov. 20), Vanderbilt (Dec. 17) and Duke (Dec. 19) before its Ivy League opener on Jan. 19, 2013, against Columbia.

“We really want to test ourselves in our non-conference portion of the schedule,” said Courtney. “We feel like that better prepares us for the Ivy League season.”

IVY LEAGUE BASKETBALL
2012-13 MEN'S PRESEASON MEDIA POLL
(First-place votes in parentheses)
Rank School Points
1. Princeton (16) 134
2. Harvard (1) 109
3. Columbia 90
4. Cornell 80
5. Penn 74
6. Yale 55
7. Brown 50
8. Dartmouth 20

• Jeff Foote (Cornell '10) scored 5 points (2/4 FGs), grabbed 3 rebounds and 1 steal while contributing no turnovers in 10 minutes of play off the bench as his #2 European ranked Zalgiris team of Lithuania defeated #1 CSKA Moscow of Russia, 76-66 on Sunday in the VBT League. Nenad Kristic had 11 points for CSKA while Victor Khryapa added 8 points.  See the recap on the VBT website and some highlights below, including a Foote dunk.

• Jeff Aubry (Cornell '99) finished with 5 points and 5 rebounds as his Halcones team of Mexico's premier league, the LNBP, crushed Lechugueros 81-57.  Halcones is 13-5 and in 4th place in the 16-team league.  Aubry is averaging 6.7 points and 5.6 rebounds per game.

• Excluding Cornell's recruiting class, below is a list of players committed to Ivy League schools in the class of 2013:

Lealand King (Brentwood School) Los Angeles, CA, 6-6, F, Brown
Tavon Blackmon (Gonzaga) Washington, DC, 5-11, G, Brown
Connor Voss (St. Cloud Cathederal HS) St. Cloud, MN, 6-11, C, Columbia
Eli Harrison (Sisters HS) Sisters, OR, 6-6, F, Dartmouth
Mike Flemming (Northfield Mount Hermon, MA) Lincolnshire, IL, 6-1, G, Dartmouth
Hunter Meyers (Douglas HS) Minden, NV, 6-6, F, Harvard
Zena Edosomwan (Northfield Mount Hermon, MA) Hollywood, CA, 6-9, F, Harvard
Dave Winfield (Harvard Westlake HS) Hollywood, CA, 6-8, F, Penn
Tony Bagtas (Westlake HS) Atlanta, GA, 5-11, G, Penn
Hashim Moore (Hun School, NJ) Ft. Lauderdale, FL, 6-5, F, Princeton
Spencer Weisz (Seton Hall Prep) Florham Park, NJ, 6-4, G, Princeton
Steven Cook (New Trier HS) Winnetka, IL, 6-5, G, Princeton
Pete Miller (Northfield Mount Hermon, MA) Northfield, MA, 6-10, C, Princeton
Sam Downy (Lake Forest HS) Lake Forest, IL, 6-9, C, Yale
Anthony Dallier (Northfield Mount Hermon, MA) Wexford, PA, 6-6, F, Yale
JT Flowers (Lincoln HS) Portland, OR, 6-5, F, Yale