News and Notes: Wednesday Edition

Get all the information you need about the Cornell Big Red's games at Western Michigan, Friday November 29, 2013, at Notre Dame (ESPN3), Sunday December 1, 2013 and vs. St. Francis (PA), Saturday, December 7, 2013 (Alumni Weekend), with The Cornell Basketball Blog's Game Preview Center. Below, news and notes for Wednesday...

• Cornell recruit, Riley Glassmann scored 14 points last night (via Daily Herald). He scored 30 points in a win on Monday in the same local tournament.

• Western Michigan improved to 4-2 as it prepares to host Cornell on Friday.

• The blog, "Following the Compass" previews Cornell-WMU and writes in part:

...Things have not gone well in Ithaca this year. The Big Red is 0-7 on the season so far, and the losses have been fairly dispiriting. Their closest contest so far was against Loyola (Maryland) against whom they went to overtime, and a 1 point loss to Siena, who is off to a similarly sluggish start. Still, neither team is terrible. Binghamton (lost by 10) Colgate (lost by 23) and Radford (Lost by 15) aren’t quite as talented.
One of the problems for Cornell is obviously their defense. They have given up 80 points in every game except the contest against Siena. This isn’t a pace issue, because they aren’t matching the scoring on offense. In fact, it seems like the offense runs through only one player, Nolan Cressler, who averages over 18 points a game, and fashions himself as some sort of long range gunner. OF course, if he was shooting better than 29.5% from behind the arc, that would definitely help. Senior Dwight Tarwater is probably a more important player for the Big Red, as he is a big forward, responsible 9 points and 7 rebounds a night. He also gets the most playing time for the Big Red.
Cornell went for a couple years as the toast of the Ivy League, but alas, the shifting demographics of smart kids who want to go to Cornell towards “not very good basketball players” has been unkind. Cornell is big in name only.

• Recent Cornell opponent, Loyola MD gave UConn a battle.

• The Ithaca Journal recapped Cornell's defeat to Radford on Monday with the headline, "Losing streak at 13 after Cornell men's basketball team falls to Radford"

• 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 27, 2013 is No. 308 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. 331 in the nation, while the Sagarin Rankings (USA Today) have Cornell at No. 344. Both sites are predominantly used by fans and the media.

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