Watchdog

I don't pretend to be a lacrosse expert, but one rule of thumb is that when the opposing goalie records the first score of the game, on your home field, and lands in the No. 1 position on SportsCenter's list of Top 10 plays for Saturday . . . it is a very, very bad sign.

Cancel that rematch against Duke.

Oh, well. Remember, people: It's a basketball school.

Am I allowed to link to a competing newspaper's Web site if said Web site is running an NCAA Tournament diary by a Cornell lacrosse player?

Silly question.

Ohio State has a lacrosse team? Who the heck knew?

Whatever. Once we swat them aside this weekend, it's on to a quarterfinal shocker over Duke - in Ithaca! - and then another Final Four.

Yay!

ESPN.com's Bill Simmons made fun of Cornell fans and Cornell cheerleaders after the first round of the NCAAs, meaning we finally have hit the big time. (Thanks to Newsday night desk boss Jeff Weinberg for the tip.)

And it finally is time to stop torturing readers with Big Red posts.

Until the NCAA lax tournament, obviously.

Coulda been worse.

In 2001, I covered a first-round NCAA Tournament game in Storrs in which UConn beat LIU, 101-29.

And Geno was being kind.

He easily could have won it, 201-29, if he wanted.

Well, this is troubling.

Men's hoops Thursday, hockey Friday.

Now there is only one hope left.

Well . . . At least we're getting closer. Remember, Cornell fans, we lost by 40 to Arizona in 1988. We could make it really interesting in 2028!

Sigh. Well, it was fun while it lasted. On to what really matters:

The ECAC hockey semifinals and final will be live on the NHL Network Friday and Saturday.

SNY will show the semis on delay Saturday afternoon starting at 1 and the final live at 7 p.m.

Enjoy.

Quick programming note for all you Stanford, St. Joe's and Oklahoma fans in the NY area who have CBS College Sports Network (formerly CSTV):

Stanford's game Thursday afternoon and the St. Joe's-Oklahoma game Friday will be that channel's two out-of-market offerings this year.

So there are three ways to see Stanford's first-round game: Via "March Madness on Demand" on your computer, via DirecTV's "Mega March Madness" package or on CBS College Sports.

I forget what team Stanford is playing in the first round.

Here is The Boston Globe's take on the Great New York Hope (Along with Siena) in the NCAA Tournament.

Sources tell me the story appeared on the front page of the sports section, appropriately.

And here is another look at the Big Red from Newsday.com's own Mark La Monica.

(Sorry, readers. But don't worry, your long nightmare almost is over. Barring a glorious upset, by Thursday night I'll be on to other obsessions . . . like the Cornell women's team.)

Connecticut? Connecticut?

The NCAA selection committees continue to insult the upstart Cornell men and women by patronizing them with inferior first-round challenges.

First, it was the men against the eggheads from Stanford.

Now this: A matchup Sunday for the Cornell women against Geno Auriemma's overrated UConn squad. In Bridgeport, Conn.

The Big Red women laugh in the face of this alleged challenge and already are studying tape of Texas and Minnesota for their second-around matchup.

(And don't forget: The only No. 16 seed victory over a No. 1 in tournament history was an Ivy League squad, Harvard, in 1998, over . . . Stanford.)

Look at the bright side, everyone. I'm only the second most annoying Cornell alum in the media . . . if you count fictional sitcom characters.

As a reward for your patience, I shall not mention the Big Red again until after Thursday's upset of Stanford.

Thanks for reading.

Stanford? Stanford?

This is going to be way easier than I ever dreamed, so easy I'm willing to overlook being given a No. 14 seed rather than the No. 13 I insisted upon last week.

You heard it here first: In the first round Cornell will . . . cover the spread.

And congratulations to the Cornell women for the first NCAA berth in that program's history.

Holy cow. I thought I went to a hockey school.

Cornell dismissed Princeton Saturday night to finish 14-0 in the Ivy League.

Memo to NCAA Tournament committee: We shall accept nothing less than a No. 13 seed.

(This picture is not entirely accurate. The Big Red has six more victories to go to complete its mission.)

Here is a followup to the amusing story of the Binghamton sports TV guy who grew annoyed with ESPN bugging him Saturday night for Cornell basketball video.

It's nice to see the Big Red turning the sports media world upside down.

And it's nice to see a media professional comfortable with his life in a small market.

Binghamton isn't all bad.

Bridget Moynahan was born there.

Tony Kornheiser went to college there.

I once drove there during my college days to have a large cooking pot refinished.

The Cornell hoops story now has become a source of attention and amusement in the wider sports blogosphere.

Our friends at Awful Announcing alerted the world to a blog post in Binghamton that seems to take issue with ESPN's aggressiveness in seeking Cornell video, of all things, Saturday night.

Wow. However it came down, thanks to WBNG for helping ESPN lead SportsCenter with the Big Red.

Looks like John Feinstein has company.

Now two AP pollsters are voting for Cornell.

Top 25, here we come!

(UPDATE: I again tapped into the vast network of college hoops spies I developed in the early 1990s to uncover the identity of the second Cornell voter. It's Steve Rivera of the Tucson Citizen. I assume Steve recalls how close the Big Red came to upsetting Arizona in the first round of the NCAAs the last time we qualified, in 1988. It was 90-50, but Cornell clearly was about to turn the tide and simply ran out of time.)

Here is a disturbing post from our friends at Fang's Bites regarding Cornell, Glauber and me.

The item speculates about how I celebrated the clinching of the Ivy title, at the expense of hapless Harvard.

Three words: Genny Cream Ale.

There now is one team in the big dance.

So if no one else shows up, we win, right?

OK, maybe not. But still . . . congratulations, Big Red.

If the committee does the right thing and gives us a No. 12 seed or better, I will guarantee a first-round NCAA Tournament victory.

We've had 20 years to study the mistakes that were made against Arizona in that 90-50 loss the last time around. We'll do better this time.

(UPDATE: What makes Saturday night's hammering of Harvard even better is this story in the Ivy League's Paper of Record that will be profoundly embarrassing to our friends in Cambridge. My suggestion: Kick Harvard out of the league and replace it with Stony Brook, an institution with high academic and athletic standards that is free of scandal.)

Cornell defeated Dartmouth, 75-59, this Friday night to improve to 11-0 in the Ivy League and clinch a tie for the league title.

Saturday night will be one of the biggest in recent Cornell sports history, as the basketball team routs Harvard to clinch the outright title and its first NCAA Tournament berth since 1988, while next door the hockey team pummels Harvard - its most bitter rival - as well.

(I'm not clear on why Cornell's season sweep of second-place Brown in hoops hasn't already clinched the title, but no matter. It's better this way.)

Congratulations, Big Red, and thank you for making me look good.

Click below to read the guarantee I posted five weeks and nine victories ago:

Barry from Salt Lake City, a supporter of WatchDog and Cornell hoops, asked me to find the identity of the lone AP pollster who has been voting for the Big Red in recent weeks.

Using my vast network of spies, I have come up with an answer: John Feinstein!

The fact that he is a Dukie, as is Mrs. WatchDog, makes it even better. I guess he was impressed with how the Big Red hung tough at Cameron earlier this season.

We want a rematch in the NCAA Tournament.

Here is a random bit of trivia that combines two frequent WatchDog topics, the Mets/SNY and a certain college in upstate NY:

Keith Hernandez' wife, Kai, went to Cornell, and when he doesn't have the time or inclination to schlep back out to Sag Harbor after a game, he sometimes stays at the Cornell Club in Manhattan.

I had a couple of drinks there once.

On Saturday night I attended the Cornell-Princeton tilt at Hobey Baker Rink, a very small, very cool (literally and figuratively) facility that opened in 1923.

Princeton inexplicably emerged with a lucky 2-1 victory, but the many Big Red fans in attendance took the loss with grace.

And why not?

Everyone knows Cornell is a basketball school. The Big Red is 18-5 overall, 10-0 in the Ivy League and poised this weekend to make my official guarantee last month of a league championship come true.

I'm hoping for a first-round rematch with Duke. But let's not get ahead of ourselves . . .

One of my favorite Friday activities is looking at the schedule to see which two teams Cornell's basketball squad will sweep that weekend.

This week's victims: Yale and Brown.

Loyal reader Barry in Salt Lake City sent word that the Big Red now appears among the "others receiving votes" in the AP poll. Sure enough.

In the early 1990s I had a vote in the poll. Not anymore. So it wasn't me.
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As the first page of the WatchDog policy handbook clearly states, when a major newspaper - even one that competes with Newsday - writes a long story about Cornell basketball, it qualifies for a link.

Same goes for blog posts about traveling with the Cornell basketball team.

To celebrate the Big Red's success thus far, I have decided to impose a ban on gloating about my guarantee last month that it would win the Ivy title - at least until said title actually is clinched.

I was hoping for a first-round matchup against Arizona to avenge that 90-50 squeaker in 1988, but I don't think the seedings will work out. I'll have to settle for a rematch with Duke, which had to struggle for a victory over the Big Red last month and didn't come close to covering the 30-point spread.