News and Notes: Friday Edition

Get all the information you need about Cornell's game at Stony Brook, Sunday, December 22, 2013 with The Cornell Basketball Blog's Game Preview Center. Below, news and notes for Friday...

• Cornell's freshmen have been outstanding this season.  Everyone knows about the year Robert Hatter is having, but consider what David Onuorah and Darryl Smith are accomplishing in limited minutes.  Onuorah is grabbing 3.4 rebounds in just 17 minutes per game while shooting an ideal 56% from the floor in the post.  He's also contributing 3.4 points.  Smith is also posting ideal shooting numbers, hitting 45% on FGs (and 4/7 from beyond the arc) while posting 3.1 points per game.

• Jeff Foote (Cornell '10) had another strong game off the bench (7 points, 3 rebounds and 3 assists in 20 minutes), but the Springfield Armor fell to 1-8 on Thursday under Doug Overton.  On the season, Foote is averaging 18.8 minutes and playing extremely efficient with 7.0 points, 4.9 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 1.3 blocks while shooting 55% from the floor.  Foote was Second Team All NBA D-League in 2012 with the Armor (and was called up to the NBA) but has been relegated to a reserve roll under the new regime of coaching staff.

• The Juice analyzes Syracuse's games thus far and writes, "We’re about 1/3rd of the way through the college basketball season now, which means we’ve had enough time to gather some coherent data about the Syracuse basketball team. In five of Syracuse’s 10 games, the Orange has been in 'clutch' situations.  What do I mean by 'clutch?' Simply put, I looked at shots from the field and at the free throw line if the game was within 10 points at any time within two minutes left.  Using this as our baseline, the games fall neatly into two categories of five games each. In the first category, we have Cornell, Fordham, Colgate, Indiana and Binghamton, where the result was determined by, at worst, the middle of the second half. That leaves St. Francis (NY), Minnesota, California, Baylor and St. John’s as games where shots in the final two minutes had an important outcome on the game."

• 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 December 20, 2013 is No. 341 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. 337 in the nation, while the Sagarin Rankings (USA Today) have Cornell at No. 341. Both sites are predominantly used by fans and the media.

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