ITHACA, N.Y. – Nolan Cressler freed himself in the corner off a screen, caught the inbounds pass and buried a 3-pointer to give Cornell a 49-30 lead over the Binghamton men’s basketball team with 18:45 left in tonight’s game at Newman Arena.
BU head coach Tommy Dempsey, fed up with his team’s inability to execute its halftime adjustments on the sophomore guard, called timeout. From there, he noticed a change in his team’s level of intensity, and the Bearcats (1-2) overcame the 19-point deficit for an impressive 89-79 win, their first in 13 games dating back to last year.
“We haven’t won a lot of games around here, and to be down 19 on the road, it would have been really easy to roll over, and we just kept fighting,” Dempsey said. “We had a great spirit. We had a great belief in one another, and we seized the moment.”
Though he didn’t shine in the box score, senior guard Rayner Moquete played a key role in the second half. Dempsey assigned Moquete to Cressler, who finished with 19 points, and the senior held Cornell’s top scorer on the night without a point in the final 13:26 of play.
“[Moquete] was as important to us winning this game as anything,” Dempsey said. “I told him, ‘You want minutes right now, you have one job, and that is to go in there and take Cressler out of the game because if he keeps hitting 3s, we can’t come back.'”
Even with Moquete silencing Cressler, the Bearcats would have struggled to claw their way back into the game if they shot as poorly as they did in the first half, when they converted just 30.8 percent of their field-goal attempts. They hit just one of their first 11. Cornell, on the other hand, shot 58.1 percent to take a 43-30 lead at the break.
After Cressler extended Cornell’s advantage to 49-30, the teams traded baskets until Cornell led, 61-42, at the 12:44 mark. Then, with a mix of four shooters and sophomore guard Jordan Reed playing a post role on offense, Binghamton capitalized on mismatches and found its offensive rhythm.
“It put Cornell in a really tough spot because they really didn’t have an answer for Jordan in the post,” Dempsey said. “What we needed to happen was we needed the guys to make shots around him, and when they were able to do that we became a very hard matchup.”
Reed and freshman point guard Marlon Beck II carried the team on a 15-5 run that cut the deficit to 66-57 with 6:42 left. It was the first time Cornell led by as few as nine points since the 13:38 mark of the first half, when the Big Red held a 13-5 advantage.
The Bearcats trimmed the gap to five points on three occasions, but couldn’t force the necessary stops to pull any closer until freshman forward Nick Madray stole an entry pass, took it coast-to-coast and finished his own miss. Moments after Cornell answered with a bucket, Beck sank a 3-pointer from the top of the arc to pull within 77-75.
With 1:53 left, the game saw its first and only lead change as Reed attacked 6-foot-9 freshman center David Onuorah for a difficult and-one layup. He converted the foul shot, and Binghamton led, 79-77.
“Jordan’s not going to back down from anybody, and that’s what he did,” Beck said. “We know that’s what he does, and that’s what he does best.”
From there, Binghamton kept its foot on the gas pedal, as Beck buried another clutch 3-pointer to extend the lead to 82-77 with 1:10 on the clock. He finished with a game-high 27 points, just two shy of Reed’s single-game freshman scoring record.
“Once we started focusing on all the stops, our offense was going, we knew we could get it,” Beck said. “I was feeling it, I was taking a lot of shots and they were falling. My teammates were behind me and they kept telling me, ‘Keep going at them, keep shooting.’”
As impressive as Beck’s scoring output was, Reed and Madray also eclipsed the 20-point mark. Reed finished with 25 points, 14 rebounds, three steals and two blocks. Madray posted a career-high 23 points on 6-of-9 shooting.
Freshman point guard Yosef Yacob scored seven points, all at the line, and dished a career-high nine assists.
As a team, Binghamton shot 57.1 percent from the floor in the second half to raise its game percentage to 44.4 percent.
With Cressler leading the way, three Cornell players scored in double-figures. Junior guard Devin Cherry posted 17 points, 12 of which came in the first half, and senior guard Dominick Scelfo finished with 10 points on 3-of-7 shooting.
The Bearcats are set to return to action on Saturday against Navy. The Midshipmen (1-2) dealt Binghamton a 75-52 beat-down in Annapolis last season.
Beck said the Bearcats won’t be caught off guard this time.
“We know we can’t settle after one win, because we’re looking for many more,” he said.
Tipoff is set for 2 p.m. at the Events Center.