“You go to Cornell? You must be really smart."

The phrase has simultaneously drawn up feelings of pride and awkwardness in Cornellians for decades. But this winter break as I externed at three different TV news stations shortly after Cornell came nail-bitingly close to beating Kansas, the phrase was nowhere to be heard.

The most common reaction I got after telling people I go to Cornell was, “Have you been following the basketball team?”

In addition to the Kansas game, people couldn’t stop talking about the great wins Cornell has had against schools such as Alabama and St. John’s.

The response wasn’t just from sports fanatics either. One surprise fan was a 60-something newswoman who gave the impression that she wouldn’t know a basketball from a volleyball. But she too was excited about the team’s recent success.

And alums are getting in on the action as well.

“The Kansas game was so great!” one alum told me. “All throughout the game, my friends from Cornell couldn’t stop e-mailing and texting me. In the last 25 years since we’ve graduated, we’ve never been able to talk about sports the way alums of other schools do. But now we finally can.”

With Cornell 2-0 in Ivy play so far, and getting lots of national buzz (Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim said The Big Red could place as high as fourth seed in the NCAA tournament) the hype is only sure to grow.

Could Cornell be turning into a basketball school?