Team captains Damon Huffman '08 and Mark McAndrew '08 both swear they're not looking ahead to the game against Ivy League-leader Cornell Saturday night.
"Honestly, I'm dead serious," McAndrew said. "It all depends on Friday night," when the men's basketball team faces Columbia in New York City.
Though second-place Brown will have a chance to cut into Cornell's two-game lead tomorrow, the Bears say they're focusing all attention now on third-place Columbia.
In fact, the Bears insist that they are treating their final six games with equal weight, viewing each as a championship game.
And they probably should, if they want to win the league title and end Brown's 22-year NCAA Tournament drought.
Brown (14-8 overall, 6-2 Ivy) will likely need to run the table to have a shot at the championship. This season, Cornell (16-5, 8-0 Ivy) is looking like the league's New England Patriots, making a serious bid to be the first team since 2003 to go 14-0 in conference play.
"Those guys (at Cornell) just keep on winning and winning," said Head Coach Craig Robinson earlier this week.
The Bears first hope to knock Columbia (12-11, 5-3) out of title contention tonight. To do that, they'll have to shut down All-Ivy forward John Baumann, who is fourth in the league in points per game (15.7) and second in rebounds per game (6.7).
The 6-foot-8 Baumann scorched Brown for 23 points and 13 rebounds in a 68-63 Brown victory at the Pizzitola Center earlier this month. But the Bears did figure him out in the second half, when they limited him to seven points.
Brown will also have to watch out for guard K.J. Matsui, who averages 8.4 points per game and leads the league with a .517 three-point percentage.
As a team, the Bears are outshooting the Lions in league play, 46 percent to 42 percent. Both teams shot about the same percentage in their first meeting, but Brown went to the line 12 more times. Columbia has rattled off four straight victories since its Feb. 2 loss at the Pitz.
After facing Columbia in New York City on Friday night, the Bears will hop on a bus to Ithaca, N.Y., where they will likely arrive far past midnight, especially if the forecast for a wintry mix holds up. But Robinson said he isn't worried about the long travel time, saying his team will have plenty of time to rest on Saturday morning.
Cornell could effectively lock up the Ivy League title with a win Saturday. A victory would propel the Big Red into their final four contests with at least a two-game lead.
The Bears weren't able to shoot in the teams' first meeting earlier this month, which Cornell won, 75-64. Brown shot just 33 percent from the floor to Cornell's 50 percent. Forward Ryan Wittman, last season's Ivy League Rookie of the Year, seemed to hit every open shot he got, scoring a game-high 21 points. He went 5-for-10 from three-point range. Wittman is a front-runner for Ivy League Player of the Year honors this season, competing with McAndrew, who is leading the league in scoring with 16.8 points per game.
Cornell leads the league in scoring by nearly seven points over the next closest team. Wittman, who has hit 49 percent of his three-pointers, is third in the league in scoring, with 16.0 points per game. Point guard Louis Dale is sixth in the league (13.3) and also leads in assists per game (4.67). Guard Adam Gore is third on the team with 9.0 points per game.
The Bears' strategy this time? Stop Wittman, Robinson said.
"And Dale and Gore," Robinson added, referring to what he believes is a very balanced Cornell squad.
But the coach said that expectations are high on the team, which is coming off a five-game win streak and its first-ever road sweep of Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. The Tigers and Quakers have dominated the league for the past two decades, with one of the two taking the NCAA Tournament bid every year since 1988. Both teams are down this season, leaving the door open for Brown or Cornell.
Even if Brown beats Cornell, it'll still need some help to force a one-game playoff against the Big Red to decide who gets the league's automatic NCAA Tournament bid. The best bet would be Yale tonight, because afterward, Cornell faces the league's worst four teams.
Robinson said that the team can only worry about its own performance and hope that Cornell will falter in its drive toward perfection, which has proven to be a difficult feat in sports this year.
