Can Cornell do it?

With apologies to major-conference Cinderella Washington and mid-major non-Cinderellas Butler and Xavier, all of whom try tonight to pull off an upset and move within a game of an unlikely Final Four appearance (at home in Indy, in Butler’s case), this evening’s most fascinating Sweet 16 matchup has got to be Kentucky vs. Cornell.

I say this not just because I picked Cornell to get this far, nor because my “upset bracket” in my office’s money pool has them winning tonight (an outcome that, if it happens, could well catapult me to victory, given the pool’s seed weighting rules that reward huge upset picks like, oh I dunno, a #12 seed in the Elite Eight). Nor do I say it merely because we will all have to worship Jay Bilas as a God if the Big Red pull it off.

No, what makes it fascinating is that, after dominating wins over Temple and Wisconsin, Cornell doesn’t feel like a fluky Cinderella team that ought to be happy to be here, like most #12 seeds (and certainly most Ivy League teams!) do at this stage. Rather, they feel like a real heavyweight with a legit chance to win. And yet, a victory would be historically unprecedented.

Since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 (and later 65) teams, #12 seeds have played #1 seeds in the Sweet Sixteen thirteen times. They’ve lost every time. There have also been three #1 vs. #13 matchups, and again, three losses for the underdogs. That’s an 0-16 record for Cinderellas from the 4/5 pod that make it to the second weekend.

Moreover, the games are rarely close. Average margin of victory for the overdog: 18 points. Just five of the sixteen games have been decided by single digits, and all of those were in 1999 or earlier (indeed, all but one were in 1993 or earlier). In the last decade, during which time seeding has arguably gotten more accurate, it’s been nothing but blowouts when a #1 seed plays a #12 or #13.

And yet. The Big Red’s first-round offensive performance against two excellent defensive teams — the #5-seeded Owls and the #4-seeded Badgers — was absolutely staggering. Cornell scored 1.35 points per possession against Temple, and followed it up with 1.45 points per possession against Wisconsin. That’s simply unheard of.

To put it in some perspective:

[T]he Big Red’s defense in the tournament has in theory been terrible, allowing Temple and Wisconsin to score a combined 1.13 points per possession. Cornell’s tournament opponents haven’t turned the ball over and have shot lights-out from the field, making an unheard of 64 percent of their twos.

And, of course, none of that has mattered one bit. The opponents who are taking such good care of the ball and scoring all those points and making all those twos are doing all of the above while trailing Cornell by 20. That is how amazing the Big Red’s offense has been.

College basketball’s a game played for the most part within shouting distance of the point-per-possession mark. Your most dominant teams will customarily score more than a point per trip while allowing a little bit less than a point on each possession. But what Cornell has done is simply to move the entire game to a different spot entirely, one that’s really fun to watch. The Big Red give up many more points than a successful team can or should, but when you score (are you sitting down?) 1.45 points per trip against a Bo Ryan defense, you win, period. No one can keep up with that. Louis Dale and Ryan Wittman scored a combined 50 points on 20-of-32 shooting.

And for those of you out there who’re thinking “Oh what a cute mid-major, they’ll go away when their shooting cools off,” keep one more thing in mind. Cornell gets offensive rebounds. This weekend they hauled down 42 percent of their own misses against two outstanding defensive rebounding teams, both of whom are superior to Kentucky in this one respect. Just saying.

So… can Cornell beat Kentucky tonight? It’d be a huge upset, probably surpassing Northern Iowa-over-Kansas in its enormity. And it would be historically unprecedented in NCAA Tournament history. (A #12 seed has reached the Elite Eight before, but only after a #8 seed had already disposed of the #1.)

But there’s a reasonable argument that Cornell — a mystery wrapped in an enigma in an era when mystery is rare, perhaps underseeded for that very reason — just might be the best #12 seed ever to reach the Sweet Sixteen. Moreover, whereas Kentucky is filled with raw, one-and-done talent, and thus inexperience, Cornell is the archetype of a senior-laden (and yet also very talented) mid-major squad. So who knows?

GO BIG RED!!!

P.S. More from Stewart Mandel:

This team isn’t some fluky mid-major. Cornell posted the highest shooting percentage (61.1) of any Wisconsin opponent in nine years and outrebounded the fourth-seeded Badgers 27-20.

Still, the Big Red be considerable underdogs against the Wildcats, and understandably so. Their first two opponents were slow-down defensive teams with limited options offensively. Wall and Cousins are two of the most athletic scorers in the country. Cornell is more experienced (four senior starters), but the Wildcats’ reliance on freshmen hasn’t slowed them down to date.

But what makes the matchup so intriguing, so historic (Cornell is the first Ivy school to make it this far since 1979), is that the two teams represent such diametrically opposite facets of the college sports environment. John Calipari’s uber-talented team is, to put it bluntly, a band of mercenaries. It’s no secret Wall, Cousins and fellow freshman Eric Bledsoe are simply passing through Lexington on their way to the NBA. Cornell is a rare bastion for the sport’s few remaining purists, a talented team whose members aren’t even on athletic scholarships, and most of whom “will go pro in something other than sports,” as those NCAA ads like to espouse.

Is it still possible in 2010 for an old-fashioned team of “student athletes” to compete with a more standard team of “athletes who moonlight as students?” We’re about to find out.

And yet more, from Tim Layden:

Cornell is comprised of non-scholarship players from the Ivy League and Kentucky could have as many as three players who are gone from the UK campus — en route to the NBA — before the first mint julep is served at Churchill Downs in late April. Some peoples’ translation: True student-athletes vs. mercenaries forced into a year’s service by minimum age rule for the NBA draft.

Seldom in the modern era (since players began leaving early for the NBA) have two teams at more distant ends of the college sports philosophy ruler met so late in the tournament. (Those famous Georgetown-Princeton matchups? Nope. Those games were never in the Sweet 16, and Georgetown never had three potential one-and-dones on the same team, because there was no one-year age rule). …

Yet, to recognize Cornell only for the ways in which it is different from Kentucky shortchanges both teams, but especially Cornell. Here the word “athletic” will rear its head, as if the only measure of athleticism is the ability to jump high or move quickly, when, in fact, athleticism can be measured in many ways. … [Says Kentucky’s] DeMarcus Cousins, talking about Cornell: “They’re ballplayers, and they’re here for a reason. They made it to the Sweet 16, so that means they can play basketball. They’re a good team.” …

[Kentucky’s John] Wall would beat 6-0 Cornell starting guard Chris Wroblewski in a one-on-one game. He could probably spot Wroblewski 12 points in a game to 15. Cousins would handle 7-foot Cornell senior Jeff Foote in a similar matchup. Foote might have trouble getting shot off.

But the beauty of basketball is that it’s not a game played by five individuals against five other individuals. (Well, sometimes it is; a good portion of the NBA game is built on that practice. But I digress.) It’s a game where the whole can truly be better than the sum of the parts, and where individuals with less-obvious talents can pool those talents into a significant force. Put it another way, Cornell can beat Kentucky. (Or get blown out; I’m not calling it either way, just saying both possibilities are on the table.)