Although no longer donning the red and white, former stars Ryan Wittman '10, Jeff Foote '10, Louis Dale '10 and Jon Jaques '10 are looking to continue their basketball careers at the professional level around the world.

Louis Dale has signed with German team BG Göttingen, while his former Cornell teammate, Ryan Wittman, makes his debut with the Boston Celtics and joins the New York Knicks in Las Vegas. Former tri-captain Jon Jaques has also become the fourth member of Cornell's class of 2010 to sign a professional basketball contract.

An overlooked, undersized, “too nice to be good” point guard who battled injuries his entire career and still earned three first-team All-Ivy selections.  A high school multi-sport star who gracefully accepted a spot on the bench for his final year after previously starting and whose hustle, toughness and effort on defense may have exceeded that of any other player in the league.

Practice Makes Perfect

The consensus among college basketball circles tends to be that there’s really no way to practice hitting game-winning, buzzer-beating 3-pointers. Well, in some cases, maybe there is.

After a convincing win over fifth-seeded Temple, the men’s basketball team continued to clown around.

Between a routine morning press conference (more questions about the Donahue – Dunphy showdown) and a standard media practice (lots of lay-up drills), what stood out most today was the atmosphere in the men’s basketball’s team locker room in Jacksonville, Florida.

Take a talented 6-7 athlete with a pure shooting stroke, add hard work and determination, sprinkle in a new mindset and a few fortuitous breaks and what emerges is the feel-good story of the men’s basketball team. After spending his first three years at Cornell mired on the bench –– he played just over 100 minutes total during the three seasons –– senior tri-captain Jon Jaques has perfected that formula. Seemingly out of nowhere, Jaques has emerged as a starter and vital cog on a Red basketball team that has taken the Ivy League –– and the nation –– by storm.

This weekend’s matchups with Yale and Brown further proved that the Ivy League has no answer to No. 25 Cornell’s dominance. The Red sent the Bulldogs back to New Haven, tails between their legs, with a 90-71 victory on Friday. The next evening, Brown came to town, taking the full brunt of Newman Nation with a 74-60 loss.

In these two games, as the Red took the court, there was a “David and Goliath” feeling in the air. Yale came into Friday’s matchup with a 2-2 record in Ancient Eight play, but was coming off a tough loss to Princeton.

NEW YORK, N.Y. –– For the second night in a row, the men’s basketball team lived up to the expectations that come with playing on sports’ most hallowed ground –– defeating St. John’s, 71-66, in a dramatic come-from-behind win to clinch the Madison Square Garden Holiday Festival title. In a game where the Red Storm defense managed to limit Cornell top-scorer Ryan Wittman to just 10 points, senior tri-captain Jon Jaques rose to the occasion, notching a career-high 20 points to lead both teams while shooting a scorching 5-for-6 from beyond the arc.

Cornell 78, Saint Joseph’s 66