Stats Watch: Big Red Play Big on the Defensive End

Above, Cornell's Adam Wire is among the Big Red's defensive stoppers. The junior finished 5th in the Ivy League in steals last year with 1.4 per game despite playing merely 15 minutes per game.

While Cornell's trademark the past several seasons has been its shooting (Cornell finished 3rd in the nation in three-point field goal percentage for the last two seasons), the Big Red are also a stalwart defensive team. In fact, in every major defensive statistical category, Cornell was among the Ivy League's top four teams a year ago, including leading the league in arguably the two most important categories--- field goal percentage defense and rebounding margin.

SCORING DEFENSE		G	Pts	Avg/G
1.	Princeton	14	781	55.8
2.	Columbia	14	840	60.0
3.	Yale	14	854	61.0
4.	Cornell	14	865	61.8
5.	Dartmouth	14	900	64.3
6.	Brown	14	918	65.6
7.	Penn	14	923	65.9
8.	Harvard	14	957	68.4

FIELD GOAL PCT DEFENSE		G	FGM	FGA	Pct
1.	Cornell	14	306	774	.395
2.	Princeton	14	275	664	.414
3.	Columbia	14	280	667	.420
4.	Brown	14	337	763	.442
5.	Yale	14	310	695	.446
6.	Penn	14	327	730	.448
7.	Dartmouth	14	310	670	.463
8.	Harvard	14	355	753	.471

3-POINT FG PCT DEFENSE		G	3FGM	3FGA	Pct
1.	Columbia	14	63	234	.269
2.	Princeton	14	55	189	.291
3.	Cornell	14	68	232	.293
4.	Yale	14	71	202	.351
5.	Penn	14	74	205	.361
6.	Harvard	14	82	217	.378
7.	Dartmouth	14	67	177	.379
8.	Brown	14	92	226	.407

REBOUNDING MARGIN		G	Team	Avg.	Opponent	Avg.	Margin
1.	Cornell	14	522	37.3	440	31.4	+5.9
2.	Yale	14	453	32.4	422	30.1	+2.2
3.	Brown	14	477	34.1	479	34.2	-0.1
4.	Penn	14	474	33.9	478	34.1	-0.3
5.	Dartmouth	14	443	31.6	449	32.1	-0.4
6.	Harvard	14	410	29.3	424	30.3	-1.0
7.	Columbia	14	438	31.3	477	34.1	-2.8
8.	Princeton	14	385	27.5	433	30.9	-3.4

BLOCKED SHOTS		G	No.	Avg/G
1.	Dartmouth	14	61	4.4
2.	Brown	14	55	3.9
3.	Cornell	14	53	3.8
4.	Yale	14	47	3.4
5.	Harvard	14	46	3.3
6.	Princeton	14	39	2.8
7.	Penn	14	36	2.6
8.	Columbia	14	29	2.1

STEALS		G	No.	Avg/G
1.	Dartmouth	14	108	7.7
2.	Cornell	14	96	6.9
3.	Columbia	14	94	6.7
4.	Harvard	14	92	6.6
5.	Penn	14	86	6.1
6.	Yale	14	81	5.8
7.	Princeton	14	80	5.7
8.	Brown	14	66	4.7