While postseason college basketball was canceled last week, the end of a largely uninspiring season for Cornell women’s basketball came two weeks prior, after the team suffered a loss for their final game of the season to Princeton, 69-50.
The Ivy League canceled the Ivy Madness basketball tournament ahead of the NCAA canceling the national tournament. The league named Princeton, the regular-season victor, the de-facto Ivy League champion.
Cornell finished the season 10-16 overall, marking its third consecutive losing season. Perhaps what is most notable about the team’s year was its struggles with in-conference play, finishing 3-11 in Ivy League games — and at one point seeing an eight-game in-conference losing streak.
This year marked the Red’s 12th season in which it ended with a losing record in-conference.
While the team will be losing two of its senior starters to graduation — forward Laura Bagwell-Katalinich and guard-forward Samantha Widmann — the future is not entirely bleak. Freshman guard Shannon Mulroy impressed many in her inaugural year and represents a fresh start for the team.
While averaging only eight points per game on the season, Mulroy displayed the skill to produce a high concentration of points when given consistent minutes. But perhaps her biggest asset is her court vision. Mulroy has shown that she has the foresight and passing ability to spread the ball around and create scoring opportunities for her teammates on the floor.
But the whole team will need to look to lower its turnover numbers going forward — all of the team’s starters had multiple five-turnover games, with two starters having at least one six-turnover game.
Cornell led the Ivy League in turnovers this season with 496. That is 13 more than second-highest Harvard, and 176 more than Penn, which had the fewest.
The season was not without its bright spots for the Red, however. Widmann notched her 1,000th point in a down-to-the-wire overtime win against Columbia in January. Cornell beat Harvard in Cambridge for the first time in program history. And the Red hung in against out-of-conference competition — even grabbing two 28-point wins against St. Bonaventure and East Tennessee State.