2008 NCAA Tournament Preview: Cornell Big Red

There are few things in life I love more than Championship Week. For my money, this week is just as exciting as the NCAA Tournament. Teams that would normally be ignored by most of us receive the spotlight, not to mention an opportunity to play in the tournament that determines that NCAA National Champion. For the second year in a row, yours truly will track the teams from smaller conferences entering the NCAA Tournament. Will the 2008 Tournament bring with it yet another Cinderella team?

That crazy Ivy League has to be different. While every other conference has a tournament in order to determine which team receives an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, the Ivy League lives in the past. Instead, the winner of the regular season conference championship represents the Ivy League in the NCAA Tournament each year. In 2008, Cornell will be the team to do just that.

The Cornell Big Red became the first team in Division I to receive a bid in the NCAA Tournament when they clinched the Ivy League conference championship. Cornell won the conference in impressive fashion. They didn't lose a single game, going 14-0 in conference play and 22-5 overall.

Like their Ivy League counterparts, Cornell has not necessarily played what could be considered a difficult schedule. The Big Red were not surprisingly blown out by both Duke and Syracuse earlier in the season. Their biggest win of the season came at home against Sienna all the way back in November. Other than that, Cornell is without any quality victories. Wins against the likes of Binghamton, Army, Stony Brook and Quinnipiac are hardly anything to get excited about.

Cornell may be lacking an overly difficult schedule this season but the Big Red is definitely full of talent. Sophomore forward Ryan Wittman leads Cornell in scoring, averaging 15.4 points a game. Another sophomore, guard Louis Dale, contributes 13.5 points and 4.4 rebounds a contest for the Big Red. Two more guards, Adam Gore and Collin Robinson, also score roughly ten points per game each. Seven-foot junior Jeff Foote rounds out the Big Red, scoring 8.6 points and grabbing 6.3 rebounds per game.