March 12, 2008 - 12:00am
By Cory Bennett
One of men’s basketball head coach Steve Donahue’s favorite words this year has been “hurdle.” It perfectly represents his one-game-at-a-time mentality. It explains why — before that final buzzer sounded — he didn’t know how to comment on what winning the Ivy title means. To Donahue, each game represents a certain kind of hurdle, and until that hurdle is either cleared or not, there is no tomorrow.
Cornell’s first game against Penn this season was one of the bigger hurdles the team had faced at that point. The Red hadn’t beaten the Quakers in nine years. The Quakers were Ivy champs three years running. Cornell was returning home to high expectations after a dominating road weekend sweep of Yale and Brown. It was the first sellout in Newman Arena since 2004.
