Courtesy of GoGriffs.com
Cornell’s Nazir Williams scored 12 points and grabbed 10 rebounds while teammate Guy Ragland Jr., came off the bench to score a dozen points as well to help lead the host Big Red to a 79-70 win over Canisius in men’s basketball action Tuesday night at Newman Arena in Ithaca, N.Y.
The win, Cornell’s fourth straight, improved the Big Red to 4-1 on the season, while the Golden Griffins fell to 2-3 with the loss.
For Canisius, graduate student Jordan Henderson scored a game-high 24 points, one shy of his career-high, highlighted by six 3-point field goals, which matched a career-best. Redshirt-freshman Tahj Staveskie scored 15 points and dished out six assists and graduate student Jamir Moultrie added 11 points. Both Staveskie and Moultrie made three 3-pointers in the losing effort for Canisius, as the Griffs made 13 triples on the night, the fourth time this season where the team has made 10-or more 3-pointers in a game.
The Griffs took an early 6-5 lead on a 3-pointer by Staveskie 1:53 seconds into the contest. That lead would end up being Canisius’ final lead of the ball game, however, as Cornell used a 17-5 run over the next 6:40 to make the score 22-11 in favor of the home team. In that scoring spurt, Cornell took advantage of four Canisius turnovers, which resulted in nine Big Red points. The Griffs trailed Cornell 45-34 at the halftime break despite shooting 50.0 percent (13-for-26) from the field in the game’s opening 20 minutes, with six of those baskets coming from 3-point land.
In the second half, Cornell led the Blue and Gold 75-61 with 3:16 left on the clock before Canisius pushed back and whittled that margin down to five points with 1:46 remaining in the contest. Henderson got that scoring surge started for the Griffs after he drilled a 3-pointer from the left wing off a pass from sophomore Xzavier Long with 2:57 on the clock. After the Griffs got back-to-back defensive stops, Staveskie hit a pair of 3-pointers 17 seconds apart to make the score 75-70 with 1:46 remaining. That would be as close as the Griffs would get the rest of the night, as Williams hit a jumper in the lane with the shot clock winding down on the Big Red’s next possession to put Cornell back up seven points at 77-70 with 1:13 showing on the game clock.
Canisius shot 42.6 percent (26-for-61) from the field for the game while making 13-of-30 3-point shots. Cornell shot 49.2 percent (30-for-61) from the floor and made 11-of-30 3-point attempts, and the Big Red ended the night with a 38-33 advantage on the glass. Canisius senior Jacco Fritz had a season-high seven boards for the Blue and Gold in the losing effort.
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