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Jeremy Hazell shoots down one of the Ivy League's best teams in years

BY MIKE VORKUNOV

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

ITHICA, N.Y. — Striking as it may seem now, Seton Hall's 89-79 win over Cornell on a chilly night in Ithica, N.Y. may just have significance in March.

It sounds like lunacy, but could end up being more than just crazy talk. It was not easy though. Jeremy Hazell had to finally find his stroke, going off for 11 straight points and finishing with 33 points on 12-25 shooting. Five of those came from behind the three-point arc, each one a dagger to Cornell's chances and giving him the upper hand in his mini-battle with the home crowd.

It had coach Bobby Gonzalez comparing him to Reggie Miller after the game.

Still they needed Herb Pope to dominate the game in every other way, stuffing the box score with 11 points, 12 rebounds (eight on the offensive end), three blocks, two assists and a steal.

But nobody said a win over a team headed for March was going to be a cakewalk, and they will definitely take it. As evidenced by the jubilation from the bench when the clock hit zero.

That, of course, was the plan for Gonzalez when they scheduled the Big Red. But plans have a tendency of going awry. Especially when they have their faults from the preparation stage.

Laudable as Cornell may be, Orange, not their hue of red, has been the only color that mattered when it comes to basketball in upstate New York. Newman Arena was built about 54 miles away from mattering.

And let's not forget, Cornell is still in the Ivy League.

But as has become the trend in college basketball, it's time to throw out the prejudices and understand the reality.

Cornell is a good team. They proved it when they went down to Alabama, picked third in the SEC West, and then up to Massachusetts, picked to finish second in the Atlantic-10, and won both times.

Still it Gonzalez does not think people will really understand the importance of what his team did by going into Newman Arena and ending Cornell's 22-game home winning streak.

"I don't because I don't think nationally people are probably going to understand how good of a team Cornell is," said Gonzalez. "I was in the mid-major and you see teams like Siena and what we did at Manhattan. You watch what Cornell has done, I've talked to some people on the phone this week and they told me they might be one of the best Ivy League teams that's come around in 15-20 years. As good as Pete Carrill's teams [at Princeton] or any of Fran Dunphy's teams [at Penn]."

Hazell realized how important the victory is, and thinks everyone else should as well.

"I hope they do," said Hazell. "Coming up here, a big east team would never come up here to play Cornell, knowing how good they are. We took a chance to come up here to show what we're about."

And to do so he had to shed his early shooting woes and play like the same guy who finished last season as the second-leading scorer in the Big East.

He started shooting like few can.

"You just think every time you touch it, it's going in. Like shooting a pebble into the ocean," said Hazell. "Every time I get it up, I thought I would get it in."

His teammates and his coaches told him to keep shooting, so he did.

For a time there it looked like he was just going back and forth, shot for shot, with Cornell's marksman Ryan Wittman. He knew it and embraced it.

"When you got two great players on two different teams, you do want to outscore that other great player on the other team. You do want to hit shots if he hits shots. Make plays if he makes plays," said Hazell. "But I was just in the zone right there. Going for my team, going for the win. I was going for the jugular."

Hazell had to because he knew the significance of the game for his team, as early in the season as it may be.

"We had heard the talk that maybe if we lose, this could be a game that people would bring back to haunt us if we're on the bubble down the road and then people said if we win, we're supposed to win," said Gonzalez. "We heard all of that and we just said look we're going to come in here and we're going to play. We want to show that we're a Big East team and we know that a lot of Big East teams don't take chances like this so we wanted to come out and get a special performance."

That they did and this is a win that can look a whole lot better in March with Syracuse, Kansas, and possibly St. John's still left on their schedule. Sports Illustrated ranked them 52nd in the entire nation and Gonzalez thinks the NCAA Tournament will be their ultimate landing. Seton Hall hopes to be in that same bracket. He expects brighter lights in the future.

"We got some big players and we're going to win some big games down the road," said Gonzalez. "I think we learned a little bit last year with USC and Georgetown. We got a little glimpse. But I think this year's team has got a chance to do some special things."

And for that chance, they needed to win this game.