BIG RED ATHLETICS
From left, Cornell seniors and basketball standouts Ryan Wittman, Louis Dale and Jeff Foote relax in the locker room. All three made the First-team All-Ivy, Wittman earned the Ivy League Player of the Year nod and Foote was named the leagues best defensive player.
Trio of standout seniors has led men's basketball team to greatness
As they sit in front of their wooden lockers in the depths of Bartels Hall, Cornell seniors Louis Dale, Jeff Foote and Ryan Wittman chat away. When they are sitting down, masking their height, little separates them from your average Cornell student.
That is, until you consider that when the story of Cornell basketball is written, their names will be in the first paragraph. Probably in the first sentence.
It's nearly unheard of to have three of the top players in the history of an athletic conference in a five-man starting lineup. Cornell basketball fans have watched them flourish over four seasons, culminating in what may be a transcendent conclusion during this month's "March Madness."
Three seniors, with plenty of help from their coaches and teammates, have turned a once-dormant program into the dominant force in Ivy League basketball. With consecutive trips to the NCAA tournament in the rearview mirror and a national ranking that peaked at No. 22, the trio hopes to advance in the tournament and go out with a bang.
As this issue went to press, the No. 12-seeded Big Red had defeated both the fifth-seeded Temple Owls and fourth-seeded Wisconsin Badgers in the first two rounds of NCAA tournament play and were set to take on Kentucky in the East Regional semifinals in Syracuse March 25.
"It's our best team, by far," says Steve Donahue, the Robert E. Gallagher '44 Head Coach of Basketball. "Particularly with those three guys leading the way. There's no doubt. It's the deepest, most talented and most experienced team, and they have a great attitude. There's not a lot of drama. They enjoy playing with each other, and that's obvious when you watch them play."
The three represent the Ivy League's top scorer (Wittman), rebounder (Foote) and assist-maker (Dale) at the end of the regular season. But despite their success on the court, Dale, Foote and Wittman are as diverse as the student body that makes up Newman Nation, the student section that cheers them on.
Dale, a 5-foot-11-inch point guard from Birmingham, Ala., is an electric creator with the dribble and one of the best pure athletes in any sport ever to attend Cornell. He was named Ivy League Player of the Year as a sophomore and already owns the school's assist record.
Foote is a gregarious 7-foot, 265-pound center from nearby Lockwood, N.Y., who went from unrecruited high schooler to one of the top big men in the country. The team's emotional leader and the conference's inaugural Defensive Player of the Year in 2008-09, he has become a campus legend, and his salute to the student section after home games has become a ritual.
Wittman, a 6-foot-7-inch forward from Eden Prairie, Minn., is the son of a former college All-American, NBA player and NBA coach. He likely will follow in his dad's footsteps. The all-time leading scorer for the Big Red, he will graduate among the greats in Ancient Eight history. He broke the conference's 3-point record early in his senior year and is widely considered to be the top shooter in the nation.
When Dale and Wittman enrolled as freshmen in fall 2006, it had been 10 years since Cornell basketball had posted a winning record and 19 since winning its last Ivy League title. In game one of the Dale-Wittman era, the Big Red went on the road and knocked off a Big Ten squad for the first time in nearly 40 years with a 64-61 victory over Northwestern. The game was bittersweet, as the team's leading scorer, Adam Gore, was injured in the final moments, causing him to miss the rest of the season. The freshmen picked up the flag and carried on, helping the Big Red to a 16-12 record and a 9-5 mark in conference play, good for third place. Midway through that season, Foote joined the roster as a transfer from St. Bonaventure. Though he had to sit out the next year, the epic improvement began then. It continues to this day.
"You look at a guy like Jeff (Foote), and how he's worked hard on the court and in the weight room," Wittman says. "You feed off that and want to become better yourself. We push each other to get better. We could never be as good alone as we are together."
It was their sophomore season, 2007-08, when the trio would break into college basketball's collective consciousness. Foote joined the team in midseason, and when he did, Cornell took off. The squad went 19-4 down the stretch, including a tightly contested loss at Duke, en route to posting a perfect 14-0 record in Ivy play. An NCAA tournament appearance was the reward, but a Stanford team featuring two 7-foot NBA lottery picks snapped a school record 16-game win streak and ended Cornell's season with a best-ever 22-6 mark.
Their junior season saw a second-straight Ivy title come home to Ithaca, the first time in the more than 50 years of conference play that a school other than perennial powers Penn or Princeton earned sole possession of the championship trophy in consecutive years.
While the 2009-10 season has already opened with memorable moments (wins at Alabama and St. John's, a buzzer-beating ESPN highlight against Davidson and a near-victory at No. 1 Kansas that drew national attention), the trio knows there is plenty left to accomplish.
"I think our senior class wants to leave a legacy of accomplishing something that no Cornell team in history has done: get to the NCAA tournament and advance," Dale says. "I think that's what we're trying to do, and hopefully we can be that Cinderella team and make the Sweet 16."
Women's basketball leaders leave with notable careers
Virginia McMunigal See larger image
Allie Fedorowicz See larger image
Lauren Benson See larger image
While they don't receive as much notoriety as their male counterparts, seniors Lauren Benson, Allie Fedorowicz and Virginia McMunigal will go down as three of the best players in Cornell women's basketball history. Not only were the trio integral parts of the Big Red's first and only Ivy League women's basketball championship in 2006-07, but they could potentially leave East Hill as the winningest senior class in program history.
Individually, each player will leave her mark in the Cornell record book, with Fedorowicz and McMunigal both ranking in the top 10 for career 3-pointers made. The pair also makes an appearance in the rankings for 3-pointers in a single season and have the potential to end their careers ranked in the top 10 for career 3-point field goal percentage.
Benson, who is a prolific 3-point shooter herself, is making a case to be called the best point guard in school history, as she already owns the single-game and single-season assist records. Benson leaves Cornell as the all-time career assist leader as well.