After a close loss to Duquesne in its season opener Friday night, the women’s basketball team celebrated an 81-54 victory over Ithaca College on Sunday in Newman Arena. Thanks in large part to an aggressive Cornell offense, the Red was able to keep its lead over the Bombers throughout the entire game.

For some people, Friday the 13th signifies a day of bad luck. The Cornell women’s basketball team hopes that the opposite is true. The Red will put superstition aside and tip its season off tonight against the Duquesne Dukes at Newman Arena at 7 p.m. Two days later, the Red will be at it again, this time facing off against the cross-town rival Ithaca Bombers on Sunday at 1 p.m.

President Barack Obama has frequently commented on the incredible influences he encountered on his road to the White House. One such influence, Prof. Charles Ogletree of Harvard University, spoke yesterday at Ithaca College, commenting on the President’s impact and early years before being elected to the highest position in the country.

Put Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Stevie Wonder, The Beatles and Pink Floyd all into a tiny room, strip away all their charisma, take away the good equipment, bring down their level of talent a bunch of notches and kidnap the good sound director, and you’ll have last Saturday night at Castaways.

The three performing bands — Dirac, Solstice and Revision — all name these greats as their influences on their respective MySpace pages, but I’m sure, somewhere, John Lennon’s cremated pieces have reassembled to roll in his metaphorical grave.

Ithaca College’s Emerson Suites overflowed with flannel shirts, tight-fitting jeans and a healthy helping of enthusiasm on Friday night, as students from across the city converged to see John Darnielle take the stage.

As lead singer of the Mountain Goats, Darnielle has developed a cult-like following since the band formed in 1991. No doubt his Ithaca fans were out in full force to support him during his solo performance.

After taking the stage, Darnielle seemed nervous and shaky as all of the attention focused in on him. Hoots and hollers from the crowd were quieted as he began his performance.

It’ll be hipster heaven on Friday as The Mountain Goats — lo-fi strummers extradonaire and progenitors of Bright Eyes and the like — descend on Emerson Suites at Ithaca College for an intimate night of singing, swooning and sharing.

Started by John Darnielle in the early ’90s — and still, as far as anyone’s concerned, his band — The Mountain Goats occupy a special niche in the indie rock stratosphere, mixing the high-brow lyricism of outfits from The Velvet Underground to The Decemberists with the beautifully earnest, slightly deranged harmonies of Neutral Milk Hotel or Daniel Johnston.

Fresh off a 3-1 showing against Columbia over the weekend to clinch the Ivy League South Division title, the softball team stays home tomorrow for a 3:30 p.m. twin bill vs. local rival Ithaca College. The Bombers (22-10) are coming off of a 10-2, 9-0 doubleheader sweep of Oneonta yesterday afternoon to run their winning streak to nine. Sophomore catcher Kerry Barger went 5-for-7 on the day, while junior first baseman Caitlin Ryan also recorded five hits, including a 3-for-3 performance in Game 2 with two RBIs. Classmate Brittany Lillie notched three extra-base hits in six at-bats, including a home run in both games –– good for a team-high seven RBIs between the two ends of the doubleheader.

Just as far above Cayuga’s waters and with an arguably more glorious view, Ithaca College students have often felt a world away from their East Hill counterparts despite being separated by only two miles. But with the recent success of Ivy, an MTV-style faux reality series produced by IC’s student-run television station ICTV, that gap could very well be narrowing.

The Ithaca College Invitational on Saturday marks the first race of the semester for both the men’s and women’s rowing teams. After intense training during their midseason break, the teams hope to start off the spring season strong and will use this race as an indicator of where the crews stand since their last meet in the fall.

Four schools will be competing in both the men’s and women’s races. The men will face Ithaca College, Marist and Hobart College and the women will go up against Ithaca College, Marist and William Smith College.

Opera inhabits the larger-than-life world of illusion and fairy-tale; we go expecting sheer fantasias of darkling grandeurs and flights of lovelorn paroxysms. But like Freudian dreamwork, the experience of opera-going may not be to elude reality so much as to enable us to digest the unforetold consequences of a reality that has leached into the mythic shapes of our shadowy under-thoughts.

Ithaca College has chosen two early twentieth century operettas based on fairy-tales for its annual opera production, Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon and Maurice Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilges. The two productions on the bill, however, could not be more different.