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Still Sweet

Players and coach recall Cornell's remarkable 2009-10 basketball season As NCAA Tournament brackets were being analyzed in March, Jon Jaques '10 would smile as he kept hearing the same question: who will be this year's Cornell? "Teams were aspiring to do what we had accomplished," Jaques, who is playing professionally in Israel, wrote in an […]

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Players and coach recall Cornell's remarkable 2009-10 basketball season

As NCAA Tournament brackets were being analyzed in March, Jon Jaques '10 would smile as he kept hearing the same question: who will be this year's Cornell? "Teams were aspiring to do what we had accomplished," Jaques, who is playing professionally in Israel, wrote in an e-mail. "That's a great feeling."

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More than a year has passed since the end of the Big Red's run to the Sweet Sixteen. Four players—Jaques, Ryan Wittman '10, Louis Dale '10, and Jeff Foote '10—have continued their basketball careers professionally, while former head coach Steve Donahue was hired to be the head coach at Boston College. We caught up with them to talk about their lives post-Sweet Sixteen.

Ryan Wittman, Cornell's all-time leading scorer, joined the Fort Wayne Mad Ants of the NBA Development League in February after several months playing for the Italian professional team in Forli, about an hour south of Bologna. Joining the Fort Wayne team late in the season, he says, was not easy.

"Being at Cornell and playing with those guys—we had such familiarity on the court, such great chemistry," says Wittman, who's averaging 5.6 points per game. He followed Cornell's progress this year, staying up late in Italy to watch their games. And when March came around, Wittman says, he began feeling nostalgic. "For all of us who have graduated and moved on, we kind of realize how special a team we had. The friendships we made, the experiences we went through together—you don't get that with every team."

Louis Dale signed with BG Goettingen, a first-division German club. He said via e-mail that he chose Goettingen over teams in Belgium and Australia, though he admitted the adjustment has been tough. "There is greater pressure to win games and perform well," Dale wrote. "The wear and tear on your body is another thing I've had to adjust to."

Dale is averaging 18.1 minutes and 8.1 points per game as a starting guard. He says that he chats with his three former teammates regularly via Skype. "In many cases, if one guy was dealing with a certain situation, it was great to know that three of your best friends are going through it, too," he reports.

Lately, Dale has caught himself reflecting more and more on what he achieved in his four-year Cornell career. "Coach Donahue would often tell us that the experience we were having playing together would be some of the best moments of our lives. Not being able to play in the tournament this year has really made me appreciate the time I had playing Cornell basketball."

Jeff Foote has been playing for the Spanish club Melilla Baloncesto since mid-November, on what he calls a "loan" from the Israeli pro team Maccabi Tel-Aviv. "I feel like a freshman in college again," Foote wrote in an e-mail. "Every day is a new adventure."

Foote signed a two-year deal with Maccabi. Because he was not expected to play much in Israel, Maccabi lent him to Baloncesto for the season. Foote says he had not felt homesick until early March, when the NCAA Tournament brackets were being announced. "Not a day passes where I don't think of the Kentucky game, and how I know we were capable of more," Foote wrote. "The memory of that game will always drive me."

Jon Jaques has been playing for the Ironi Ashkelon basketball team in the Israeli Super League, the top division of Israeli basketball since August. Getting playing time has been a struggle, but Jaques views this opportunity to continue his career as a blessing. He wasn't expecting to get a call from a club overseas. "I figured I couldn't pass it up," he says. "Playing basketball for a year abroad is a once-ina-lifetime kind of thing."

Jaques has contributed articles to the "Quad" blog of the New York Times and to SportsIllustrated.com, and he currently writes for the online edition of Slam magazine. Watching from afar has not always been easy, though. "I wish I was still playing college basketball," Jaques wrote. "Watching these games just reminds me of how I felt during our run last year and how unreal those few weeks were."

Steve Donahue says he has no regrets about leaving Cornell after a 21-13 first season at Boston College. But reflecting on that decision still stirs up emotion.

"My wife and I talked about that last week—we sat back and thought about how fortunate we were to go through that," Donahue says of his ten-year stay in Ithaca. "There's a little sadness because it was such a special time. It was special for a lot of reasons, but the main reason was the great people around the program, in the program, in the Cornell community."

Donahue's BC team finished in a tie for fourth place in the ACC and was not invited to this year's NCAA tournament. They lost to Northwestern in the second round of the NIT. Donahue says that he and his family have enjoyed living in Boston, and they might soon expect a few summer visitors—four of them, at least. For Wittman, Dale, Jaques, Foote, and Coach Donahue, it's never too soon for a reunion. "I follow their careers daily, and they follow mine," Donahue says. "And we all follow Cornell."

— Zach Schonbrun

 

Champions!

Congratulations to the gymnastics and women's hockey teams, winners of ECAC championships. For the gymnasts, it was their first league title ever. In the championship meet, Cornell finished with a score of 191.675 to edge Penn (191.175) for the title. The Big Red had five individual champions: McKenna Archer '13 and Emily Santoro '11 tied for first in vault, Alexis Schupp '14 and Maddie Pearsall '11 shared the title on bars, and Melanie Standridge '12 was tops on the beam. The women's hockey team repeated as ECAC champions after losing only one league game all year and then cruising past Dartmouth 3-0 to win the title. They advanced to the NCAA tournament, where they again defeated Dartmouth—this time by a 7-1 score—before losing to Boston University 4-1 in the national semifinal. The Big Red women finished the year with a record of 31-3-1, joining the 2002-03 men's team as the only Cornell hockey squads to post 30-win seasons.

 

Sports Shorts

KICK START Some friends of Cornell rugby are looking for help. Faded Red, the alumni rugby association, is asking former players and fans to join the group. According to President Avi Giladi '04, the association currently has about 40 active members and had about 20 people on hand for the Alumni Weekend last fall. Because of a recent reorganization of college rugby that has Cornell competing against Ivy League teams instead of the New York teams they had been playing in recent years, the program needs financial support. For more information, contact Giladi at avalope@ yahoo.com or go to the group's website at www.FadedRedRugby.com.

ISLAND TIME Forward Matthew Bouraee '10 has signed a contract with the Puerto Rico Islanders in the North American Soccer League, which begins play this spring (and is not related to an older league of the same name). An All-Ivy first-team pick at Cornell, Bouraee spent last season with the New York Red Bulls developmental team in the National Premier Soccer League, a top amateur league. He also spent time training with the New York Red Bulls MLS squad and professional teams in Austria and the United Arab Emirates.

TIE-BREAK TITLE Cornell was the top seed for the ECAC Men's Tennis Indoor Championships, but the competition went down to the wire. With the title match against Binghamton University tied at 3-3, the Big Red needed a victory at No. 4 singles. Evan Bernstein '11, who had lost the first set, rallied to take the second set 6-1 and then delivered the winning margin with a 7-3 tie break victory after the third set finished 6-6.

SQUASH STARS Men's squash player Nick Sachvie '13 was named the Ivy League Rookie of the Year after posting a 12-3 record at number one and taking second in the College Squash Association's individual championships. Two of Sachvie's three losses came to Princeton's Todd Harrity, the Ivy Player of the Year. Sachvie was joined on the All-Ivy squad by teammates Alex Domenick '12 and Thomas Spettigue '13—the first time Cornell has had three players earn All-Ivy honors. On the women's team, Jaime Laird '13 was the first Cornell player to earn All-Ivy honors since 2002 and was also named second-team All-American.

Winter Teams

Final Records

Men's Basketball 10-18; 6-8 Ivy (T-5th)
Women's Basketball 6-22; 3-11 Ivy (8th)
Fencing 9-8; 2-4 Ivy (5th)
Gymnastics 4-2
Men's Hockey 16-15-3; 11-9-2 ECAC (T-4th)
Women's Hockey 31-3-1; 20-1-1 ECAC (1st)
Men's Polo 14-4
Women's Polo 19-0
Men's Squash 10-6; 4-2 Ivy (3rd)
Women's Squash 6-7; 2-4 Ivy (5th)
Men's Swimming 6-3; 4-3 Ivy (T-3rd)
Women's Swimming 1-8; 0-7 Ivy (8th)
Wrestling 13-1; 5-0 Ivy (1st)
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