The Cornell men\u2019s team\u2019s participation adds an extra element of excitement for the Ithaca community. Wins against Yale and Brown (86-80) on Feb. 27-28, coupled with a number of other favorable results, meant the Big Red didn\u2019t have to wait until the final game of the season to qualify.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re honored and proud to be hosting this tournament,\u201d said Jon Jaques \u201910, the Robert E. Gallagher \u201944 Head Coach of Men\u2019s Basketball. \u201cAll year, we said we want to be peaking in March and I think we are trending in that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jaques, a starter on the Cornell team that made it to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament in 2010, emphasized to the team the importance of doing the detail work that leads to success this time of year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe little things, the sacrifices, are all worth it when you get to play in March,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Planning for the tournament started in January 2025, and has involved everyone from the Cornell University Police Department and Cornell Dining to Ithaca College, Tompkins Cortland Community College and Ithaca High School, which will be hosting practices for qualifying teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you count all the people who have been working behind the scenes and those who will be working or volunteering the weekend of the tournaments, about 250 people will have been involved to make this happen,\u201d said Megan Ramey, associate athletic director for events and operations.<\/p>\n
The student sections cheers on the Big Red at Newman Arena.<\/p>\n
Ramey, who oversees logistics for all Cornell athletics events, is serving as the tournament director. She will be making sure the weekend runs smoothly, from coordinating security, parking, vendors and ushers, to ensuring the floor in Newman Arean is tacky enough for the players and the scoreboard is operating properly.<\/p>\n
The weekend promises to be a hectic one on campus, Ramey said, as basketball won\u2019t be the only game in town. The 11th-ranked Cornell men\u2019s hockey team will be hosting an ECAC Hockey quarterfinal series at Lynah Rink, and the Cornell men\u2019s lacrosse team, the defending national champion currently ranked seventh in the country, hosts Brown on March 14 at Schoellkopf Field.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the overlapping games, we\u2019re looking at having possibly 20,000 people on campus for Cornell athletic events on that Saturday,\u201d Ramey said.<\/p>\n
Cornell will be closing Bartels Hall, home of Newman Arena, to the public for the week prior to the tournament in order to prepare. \u201cMegan Ramey has done a heroic job of pulling all the pieces together, coordinating every element, and doing it with a great deal of enthusiasm,\u201d Moore said.<\/p>\n
Ramey, who coordinates upward of 200 athletics events each year for Cornell, said this a special chance for Cornell to take center stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is as close as Cornell will ever come to hosting an NCAA Tournament game,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cornell men\u2019s team\u2019s participation adds an extra element of excitement for the Ithaca community. Wins against Yale…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-520870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}