News and Notes: Thursday Edition

Get all the information you need about the Cornell Big Red's game vs. Siena, Friday, November 22, 2013 with The Cornell Basketball Blog's Game Preview Center.  Below, news and notes for Thursday...

• The Daily Pennsylvanian surveys the Ivy and notes:

Cornell (0-5) remained winless, losing games to Binghamton, Louisville and Colgate. After leading Binghamton 43-30 at half on Wednesday, the Big Red were outscored by 23 after the break, and ended up losing by a final of 89-79. Cornell struggled against third ranked Louisville on Friday, shooting just 29.2 percent from the field, and dropping the contest 99-54.
To top off the Big Red’s bad start to the season, they were destroyed, 81-58, on the road at Colgate, as the Raiders shot 54.2 percent on the night.

• A key Siena player is injured according to the Troy Record.  Siena visits Cornell on Friday.

• Per the Columbia Spectator, Kyle Smith compared the Lions' upcoming opponent, North Texas, to Cornell.

• ESPN writes, "WHEN IT COMES to recruiting four- and five-star prospects, Boston College coach Steve Donahue has a distinct strategy: Know when to fold. BC doesn't have the hoops lure of geographic rival UConn or its Carolina-based ACC foes, so Donahue finds that it's best to be realistic. Which raises the obvious question: How did he land Olivier Hanlan, last season's ACC rookie of the year? 'You've got to find guys who people don't think are good enough,' says Donahue. 'Or ones they don't know about.'  It's hard to imagine the player who led all ACC freshmen in double-digit-scoring games (28) fitting into either category, but the Quebec-born Hanlan played his first two years of high school in Canada, off the radar of most American recruiters. Donahue was one of the few early courters thanks to his relationship with Hanlan's AAU coach, Dave Smart, whom Donahue knew from his previous recruiting trips up north while at Cornell."

• Cobb Life Magazine writes of Marist H.S. in Georgia, "The War Eagles lost several players who have moved to Division I colleges, including Quinton Stephens (Georgia Tech), Greg Taboada (Stanford for football), David Onuorah (Cornell), Daniel Morrison (Air Force) and Brandon Young (Georgia as a walk-on)."

• Cornell RPI Watch: The RPI (Rating Percentage Index) is a measure of strength of schedule and how a team does against that schedule. It does not consider the margin of victory, but only whether or        not a team won and where the game was played (home/away/neutral court). The formula is 25% team     winning percentage (WP), 50% opponents' average winning percentage (OWP), and 25% opponents' opponents' average winning percentage (OOWP). (See: CollegeRPI.com for a further explanation of the formula.) The RPI may be the most influential factor in NCAA Tournament seeding. Cornell's RPI rank as of November 21, 2013 is No. 262 out of 344 total Division I teams. While neither the Ken Pomeroy or the Sagarin Rankings (USA Today) are used by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee, the KenPom.com site ranks Cornell No. 327 in the nation, while the Sagarin Rankings (USA Today) have Cornell at No. 294. Both sites are predominantly used by fans and the media.