When St. Francis shot out of the gate and seized momentum from a flat Cornell team, it looked like a long night was in store for the Big Red.

It turned out Cornell just needed some time to warm up.

The Big Red defeated the Red Flash, 75-54, last night in the first round of the 2K Sports College Hoops Classic at the Carrier Dome. Cornell used a 30-8 run in the final 11 minutes of the game to end the back-and-forth style played for most of the game.

‘I didn’t feel like it was a 20-point game,’ Cornell head coach Steve Donahue said. ‘First of all, we’re not used to them that much. We grinded out and got big shot after big shot when we really needed it.’

After a closely played first half, Cornell quietly distanced itself in the second half. While the Big Red found its offensive stride in that second half run, the Red Flash failed to score for five minutes of the run. The Big Red outscored St. Francis, 43-28, in the second half.

Cornell forward Ryan Rourke led all scorers with 25 points and forward Jason Hartford came off the bench for the Big Red to score 16 points and grab 11 rebounds.

For the most part, it was a streaky game with neither team able to put together a solid performance.

Cornell used a 26-10 run starting with 13 minutes left in the first half to erase an early St. Francis lead and squash the momentum built by the Red Flash. St. Francis, which has four freshmen in its playing rotation, continued to miss jump shots, allowing the Big Red back into the game.

‘We have four freshmen we really have to rely on,’ St. Francis head coach Bobby Jones said. ‘I thought early on we shot too many jump shots.

‘I thought (Cornell was) pretty sharp, especially since this game was played about two weeks early.’

But Cornell never really had a solid grasp on the game either. St. Francis responded in the opening minutes of the second half, tying the game, 34-34, with 18:06 remaining.

The Big Red, a historically poor second-half team, seemed to be handing yet another game over to its opponent in the second half.

‘I understand what this group is going to give me day in and day out more than any team I’ve ever had,’ Donahue said. ‘They were pretty confident. They understood what they had to do and matched up right away.’

Cornell goes on to play Syracuse tonight at 8 at the Carrier Dome. The Big Red returned to Ithaca last night because some players had exams. Still, Donahue said, it’s something Cornell needs to get used to playing in the Ivy League, where back-to-back games are a common occurrence.

‘We really got to be on top of our game (to beat Syracuse),’ Cornell junior Jason Hartford said. ‘We need to do a lot of things right to be in that game.’

Published on November 8, 2005 at 12:00 pm