Nobody in America plays basketball quite like Cornell. While the rest of the sport grinds toward the shot clock, the Big Red sprint the other way — five-out spacing, a blur of back cuts, and a three-point barrage that broke school and Ivy League records in 2025–26. Under Jon Jaques, the former captain of Cornell’s 2010 Sweet 16 team, Ithaca has become home to the most entertaining offense in the mid-major world: the Big Red led the entire nation in assists and made threes last season, and they did it while testing themselves against one of the toughest mid-major schedules anywhere. The wins haven’t fully caught up to the style yet. But the identity is unmistakable, and in 2026–27 it gets another year to mature.
Jaques is the through line of Cornell’s two greatest eras. As a senior starter and captain on the 2010 team — the one that beat Temple and Wisconsin to reach the Sweet 16 under Steve Donahue — he lived the program’s modern peak. Then he spent a decade on the bench as an assistant, rising to associate head coach under Brian Earl before taking over in 2024. Two seasons in, the numbers are loud: 33–24 overall, 17–11 in the Ivy, back-to-back Ivy League Tournament appearances, and a run to the 2025 championship game. The program’s official line calls it “connected teams, unselfish play and an identity built around trust and precision.” The eye test calls it the most fun 88 points a night in college basketball.
Because the 2025–26 numbers are genuinely absurd. Cornell finished 15–13 and 8–6 in the Ivy — fourth place — but the efficiency metrics read like a video game: first in the nation in assists per game (21.3), first in three-pointers made per game (12.9), fifth in effective field goal percentage (.599), sixth in three-point percentage (.393), sixth in scoring offense (88.5 points per game), and seventh in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.83). The Big Red set school and Ivy League single-season records for assists (596) and threes (362), plus a program-best assist-to-turnover ratio. They did it against a murderer’s row of a nonconference slate — NIT Final Four team Illinois State, George Mason, Samford, Kent State, Towson and Sweet 16 participant Michigan State. The style translates. It translates against everyone.
The faces of the revolution were the seniors: guard Jake Fiegen, a first-team All-Ivy selection, and guard Cooper Noard, second-team All-Ivy and an NABC all-district honoree. Noard was a top-25 national scorer early in the season at 20.6 points per game, a three-level bucket-getter who set the tone without needing the ball in his hands. Senior Adam Hinton dropped 29 in the season opener against Kent State and joined the 100-point club before Thanksgiving. Jaques took the team to Italy in August — ten days, Rome to Milan, three convincing wins over Italian clubs — and the bonding showed in November: the ball moved, everybody shot, everybody scored. Eight of the 17 players who scored in the first nine games shot above 50 percent from the field.
The frustration, of course, is Yale. The Bulldogs have become Cornell’s personal March nightmare, ending the Big Red’s season in the Ivy League Tournament for three straight years, including the 2025 championship game. Cornell finished second in the 2024–25 regular season at 18–11 and 9–5 — the program’s best league finish in years — and still couldn’t break through the league’s ceiling. In 2025–26, the 104–99 home loss to Columbia on January 4 stung (the Lions erased a second-half deficit in the Ivy opener), and the fourth-place finish meant another Ivy Madness trip without a title. The Big Red are the league’s most dangerous team and its most snakebitten, all at once.
That’s the backdrop for 2026–27, which is a genuine transition year. Fiegen, Noard and Hinton are gone. Forward AK Okereke — a second-team All-Ivy talent — graduated early and transferred to Vanderbilt. Role players Chris Cain and Ryan Kiachian graduated too. Jaques’ answer is a blend of four freshmen and two transfer additions around a veteran core, plus the same system that made everyone a shooter and everyone a passer. The question isn’t whether Cornell will score — it will, because the system manufactures 88 points a night — it’s whether a new lead guard emerges and whether the defense, the eternal weak spot of pace-and-space teams, takes a step.
The history here deserves its due, because Cornell’s peaks have been spectacular. The 1954 team reached the Sweet 16. The 1988 team broke a 34-year tournament drought. Then came the three-peat: Ivy titles in 2008, 2009 and 2010, capped by the 2010 Sweet 16 run with Ryan Wittman, Jeff Foote and Louis Dale that made the Big Red America’s favorite underdog for two glorious weekends. Newman Arena, the 4,472-seat bandbox inside Bartels Hall, still rocks when the threes start falling in bunches. The program has never been about grinding out 55–52 wins. It’s about the avalanche.
And the avalanche is coming back. Year three of the Jaques era is the moment a program’s identity either becomes a tradition or a footnote. The offense is already a tradition — the nation’s best passing team two years running doesn’t happen by accident. What’s missing is the February breakthrough: a regular-season crown, an Ivy Tournament title, a return to the Big Dance for the first time since 2010. Yale owns the league until someone takes it. Cornell, playing the most distinctive basketball in the country, intends to be the team that does.