Cornell and Columbia set to invade Palestra Call them the young and the restless. Cornell is the young. With only four returning players and 13 newcomers, nobody knows quite what to make of the Big Red (8-10, 3-3 Ivy League), except they lost to Notre Dame by 30 and it took them two overtimes to beat Buffalo. As for Columbia (3-15, 0-6 Ivy League), they're restless. After starting out last year 4-0 in the league, they haven't won an Ivy game since. And to top it all off, that losing streak began last year with a loss to Penn at the Palestra in a game Columbia led late in the first half. Now, with leading scorer C. J. Thompkins out with a broken ankle, nobody knows quite what to expect out of Columbia, either. One thing is for certain. This weekend seems to pose the least threat to Penn's 34-game Ivy League winning streak of all the Ivy weekends this season. Of course, no one on the Quakers (14-3, 5-0) is looking at it that way. "We play the two most important games we're playing this year Friday and Saturday," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. "That's how we're looking at it. Cornell is 8-10 and has some decent wins on their schedule and they're coming in here expecting to beat us. "Columbia's the same thing. They may not have had a great deal of success over the last year and a half, but as far as we're concerned they're national champions and that's how we're going to play the game." The Cornell story really began in the middle of last season, when coach Al Walker went about replacing all-Ivy forwards Justin Treadwell and Zeke Marshall. What he got was one of the top 20 recruiting classes in the country. It included such gems as all-Kentucky point guard DeShawn Standard, 27-year old junior college transfer Eddie Samuel, Montana player of the year Trent Hickes and a Nebraskan who turned down a football scholarship from Tom Osborne. Needless to say, it was not your typical Ivy League recruiting class. For one thing, it brought players from as far away as California and Florida to the frozen tundra of upstate New York. "Unlike Philadelphia, there's not a lot of great basketball players in Syracuse or Ithaca or Plattsburgh, New York," Walker said. "We spent a lot of time on the recruiting trail." Of the newcomers, it has been Standard, Samuel and Hickes who have made the most impact. Standard and Hickes have shared duties at the point, placing Cornell in the unique position of having two freshmen running the offense. Standard is averaging 7.3 points per game and has 20 more assists than turnovers, as does Hickes, who is averaging 3.8 ppg. For a team like Penn, it doesn't really make a difference who Cornell's point guard is. "We're not going to change our style," Dunphy said. "Typically we try to put as much pressure as we can on every point guard, whether he's a freshman or a senior. From that standpoint we'll essentially do the same things that we always do." Samuel is a slightly different story. He spent five years in the Air Force before starting his college career at Pensacola Junior College in Florida. Now he is one of only a few experienced big men in the Ivy League, scoring 12.7 ppg and pulling down 5.9 rebounds per game. "When he plays well, he's one of the legitimate scoring threats in the league," Walker said. At the age of 27, Samuel does present an interesting problem. "He's really old," Walker said. "His body's broken down. He doesn't practice, he just does the light stuff and plays on Fridays and Saturdays." Joining Samuel in the frontcourt is another newcomer, freshman Dan Wendt, who averages 8.4 ppg. There's more to Cornell than just rookies, though. The Big Red also have shooting guard Brandt Schuckman and power forward Brian Kopf. Kopf is among the Ivy leaders in rebounds, pulling down over seven per game. Schuckman leads Cornell in scoring, shooting 40 percent from long distance and scoring 14.8 ppg. For Columbia, playing Penn brings to mind a whole spate of memories. For one, there's the last time an Ivy team beat Penn, way back in the winter of 1992. That was a 71-66 Columbia win. But what most Columbia upperclassmen remember is the seminal game two years ago, when the Lions hosted the Quakers late in the season with the Ivy title on the line. Levien Gymnasium was overflowing, with the official attendance 200 people more than the capacity of the gym. "I remember Sports Illustrated coming in before the game to put cameras on the backboards and the stands full an hour before the game started," junior forward Jim Tubridy said. "I've been telling everyone how exciting it was. We've been saying how much fun it was just being around it." As everyone knows, Penn won. The Quakers clinched a tie for the Ivy title that night and haven't looked back. After winning their first four Ivy games last year, the Lions came down to Philadelphia with thoughts of knocking off the Quakers. For most of the first half, it certainly seemed a possibility. With four minutes to play in the first, Columbia led 28-27. As the Lions ran into foul trouble, the game slipped away, and Columbia hasn't won an Ivy game since. "It's always in the back of my mind," Tubridy said. "It was great for us, the first half at least. For 19 minutes we played as well as we possibly could. We had our minds set on an upset. We never recovered." The chances of a repeat performance have been lessened by the loss of Thompkins to a broken ankle. Thompkins held Jerome Allen to 1-for-8 shooting last year at the Palestra. He had been Columbia's leading scorer this season, averaging 13.1 ppg. Now that honor belongs to sophomore Tony Doyle, who is scoring 13 ppg. The Lions also have a strong frontcourt in Boris Piskun (12 ppg) and Tubridy (8.5 rpg). "We haven't been able to replace what [C. J.] does," Columbia coach Jack Rohan said. "For one thing, it's not really noticeable to fans how good a defensive player he is. We just have to be effective with what we have. Like Princeton, we have to work it around the perimeter until we get a good shot." With or without Thompkins, the Lions have had trouble finding consistency this season. Despite coming close a few times, Columbia hasn't beaten a Division I opponent since December. "It's been really frustrating for us," captain and point guard Fred Johnson said. "We've played well at times. We're just trying to stick together, to go out and have fun." For Johnson, that means enjoying his last trip to the Palestra "I've had so much fun playing against Penn," Johnson said. "As a competitor, it's the team I enjoy playing most. Going into the Palestra, it's loud, it's packed, and the fans are crazy. It's what college basketball is all about."
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