Cornell announces M. Hoops schedule

File this under things you should mildly care about: Cornell announced its 2011-12 men's basketball schedule.

From it, we can discern Penn's Ivy slate for the upcoming season, as well as get a look at what kind of preparation the Big Red will be doing before the 14-game tournament kicks off in mid-January.

First, the latter: the highlights on Cornell's non-conference schedule include early season matchups with America East champ Boston University and American University. They'll then take a tough December road trip with stops at Illinois, Penn State, Patriot League champ Bucknell and concluding with ACC powerhouse Maryland.

Sidenote, per the Washington Times: Maryland has faced the Big Red once before, a 92-41 dismantling (if that is even a strong enough word), in 1993. The last time The Terps played an Ivy was Princeton in 2001 (Princeton lost that one, too).

And from Cornell's schedule (and Yale's) we can triangulate Penn's conference slate:

Jan 27: At Columbia Jan 28: At Cornell

Feb 3: At Yale Feb 4: At Brown

Feb 7(?): Princeton

Feb 10: Harvard/Dartmouth Feb 11: Dartmouth/Harvard

Feb 17: Cornell Feb 18: Columbia

Feb 24: at Harvard/Dartmouth Feb 25: at Dartmouth/Harvard

March 2: Brown March 3: Yale

March 6(?): at Princeton

Throw in a home game against Princeton early on and an away game during spring break (I'm guessing Tuesday Feb. 7 and March 6 based on last year) and voila.

Last year Penn started the Ivy season 3-0 with wins over Yale, Brown and Dartmouth before a monster, 2OT matchup with Harvard. The buzz on campus after that 3-0 start helped bring out students to create a raucous atmosphere for Harvard (almost no-one showed the night before to see Tyler Bernardini drop 21 and hit 4-for-4 from 3, all with the flu)

For the Quakers to return home 4-0 in Ivy play (possibly facing Princeton on a quick turnaround), they'll have to solve some road-woes from the New York trip: Penn hasn't won at Columbia's subterranean gym since 2009. Penn has been cold in Ithaca since January 2007.

For more on Penn's non-conference schedule, see this post.