With all-Ivy swingman Lenny Collins gone, the Cornell basketball team was pinning most of its hopes on Adam Gore, last year's Ivy League Rookie of the Year.
Now, the Big Red will have to find another option. Gore will miss the rest of the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament. He suffered the injury to his right knee in the final minute of the Big Red's season-opening win at Northwestern on Friday.
Monday's MRI confirmed that the ligament was indeed torn.
"I'm disappointed for him," Big Red coach Steve Donahue told The Ithaca Journal. "He's worked extremely hard only to see him blow out his knee on the first game. It was such a euphoric night, and for that I'm just crushed for him personally. The team will survive."
The team will also have to survive without Jason Hartford, who is still out with a nagging foot injury.
But Gore is the biggest loss for a Big Red squad that was picked third in the league - behind Penn and Princeton - in the preseason media poll.
As a freshman, he led the conference and set a school record with 83 three-pointers made. The All-Ivy second-teamer averaged 12.9 points per game, shooting 42 percent from behind the arc.
In its first game without Gore, the Big Red edged Stony Brook at home, 76-72, to improve to 2-0. The Big Red relied on one of the league's best big men - Andrew Naeve - who scored 20 points.
Cornell faces Penn for the first time in the Ivy League opener Jan. 12 in Ithaca, N.Y.
