Bucknell University
9-6
Cornell
4-8
Bison Pound the Glass in 63-60 New Year's Eve Win over Cornell
12/31/2011 7:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 31, 2011
LEWISBURG, Pa. - Mike Muscala scored all 18 of his points in the second half and led a terrific effort on the boards with 13 rebounds, helping Bucknell rally past Cornell 63-60 on Saturday afternoon at Sojka Pavilion. Bryan Cohen added 13 points in addition to his usual strong defense, and Bryson Johnson hit a key 3-pointer late en route to a 12-point night as the Bison improved to 9-6 on the season.
Bucknell Athletics Hall of Famer Bill Courtney '92 returned to Lewisburg for the first time as Cornell's head coach, and his team led for the entire first half before the Bison righted themselves after an ugly start. The Big Red (4-8), who are in the midst of a brutal holiday road trip that has also included close losses to Illinois, Penn State and Stony Brook, received 18 points from Johnathan Gray and 11 from Chris Wroblewski.
Bucknell's victory was its 26th of 2011, a new program record for wins in a calendar year. The previous mark was 25, set in 2005.
Trying to shake off Wednesday's rare home loss to Loyola (Md.), Bucknell struggled early against Cornell's aggressive trapping defense. The Bison missed their first seven shots and 15 of their first 18, and they were stuck on six points for more than seven minutes. Even with that offensive drought, Bucknell held its own defensively and never trailed by more than nine points.
Two free throws by Josh Figini gave Cornell a 15-6 lead, but Brian Fitzpatrick scored inside at the 5:28 mark and Johnson followed with Bucknell's first 3-pointer of the night. Glad to be down just 25-20 after shooting 30.4 percent in the first half, the Bison got going quickly in the second stanza to reclaim the lead.
Sophomore Ryan Hill, who made his first career start, opened the half with a driving layup, and then Muscala followed with a layup and a slam dunk for his first points of the night. The jam, off a nice feed from Cohen, gave Bucknell its first lead at 26-25.
The lead would change hands four more times before Joe Willman gave Bucknell the lead for good with a put-back at the 10:22 mark. After another Muscala dunk, Steven Kaspar took a charge, which led to another Muscala bucket in the lane. After Cornell missed a pair of free throws, Muscala hit both ends of a 1-and-1 to cap an 8-0 run and give Bucknell a 44-37 lead with 8:12 to play.
The Bison could not expand on that seven-point lead, however. Drew Ferry, Cornell's leading scorer at 14.6 points per game and the nation's second-leading 3-point shooter, had been bottled up all night by Cohen, but Ferry managed to shake free for a couple of late treys to keep the Big Red in it. The second of those made it a 56-54 game with 2:20 to play, but Johnson followed with perhaps Bucknell's biggest shot of the night, pump-faking around an airborne defender before hitting a 3-pointer from the right corner to stretch the lead back to five.
The Bison then came up with a stop but turned it back over on a 5-second violation, but then Eitan Chemerinski missed a point-blank layup for Cornell and fouled out going for the rebound. Fitzpatrick made 1 of 2 at the line to make it 60-54 with 50 seconds to play.
Johnson later hit a pair of free throws with 21.2 seconds to put Bucknell ahead 63-58, but the Bison had to survive a few dicey moments at the end. Wroblewski's two free throws pulled Cornell back within three with 16.9 seconds left. With no timeouts left, Johnson got trapped in front of the Cornell bench after receiving the inbounds, and he could not connect his pass up the floor.
Wroblewski came back the other way got a decent look at a long 3-pointer as Cohen lost his footing. The shot drew only iron, however, and went out of bounds back to Bucknell with 1.1 seconds left. Then Gray intercepted the inbounds pass and had another look at a possible tying three, but it also was off the mark and Bucknell escaped with the win.
Bucknell finished at 37.9 percent from the floor, including a 3-for-15 day from the 3-point arc. Muscala's double-double was his seventh of the season and 15th of his career. The junior center went over the 1,000-point mark against Loyola on Wednesday, and now he has moved into 31st place on Bucknell's career scoring list with 1,022 points.
The Bison held Cornell to 37.5 percent shooting and finished with a 40-31 edge on the glass. That included a season-high 16 offensive rebounds, which led to a 17-4 edge in second-chance points.
In addition to Muscala's 13 boards, Fitzpatrick tied his career high with nine rebounds to go along with seven points. Fitzpatrick gave the Bison a big lift with Willman in foul trouble for much of the night.
Now 6-1 at home this season and 90-30 all-time at Sojka Pavilion, the Bison improved to 24-23 all-time against Cornell.
Bucknell was playing on New Year's Eve for just the third time in program history, and for the first time since a 74-70 loss at Florida in 1968.
Bucknell has one more non-conference game to play, at Dartmouth on Tuesday night, before opening Patriot League play at Army next Saturday.
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