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Cornell (7:30PM ET ESPN Plus) – Sacred Heart was dominant start to finish to put us back in the win column and we will go for another tonight when the Cornell Big Red hit the road to take on the George Mason Patriots at the EagleBank Arena in Fairfax, Virginia.

Cornell is far better than the oddsmakers/betting market are giving them credit for, and I think we have a WTF (wrong team favored) situation here.  Cornell went into Rose Hill Gym and smashed a Fordham squad that, while not as good as last year, is still a better Atlantic 10 team than the George Mason side the Big Red will face tonight.  I was at Cornell’s season opening game at Lehigh, the Mountain Hawks made everything in the first half and led 44-39 at halftime but Cornell made the adjustments in what ended up being a comfortable 84-78 Cornell win. Lehigh had the advantage of having experienced guards that can handle the basketball, Fordham had the advantage of an elite defense but neither mattered as Cornell was able to clamp down defensively on Lehigh in the second half and shoot 54 percent from the field against Fordham despite turning the ball over 20 times.  George Mason doesn’t have either of those things, instead the Patriots have a brand new head coach in George Mason Final Four alumnus Tony Skinn and an entirely new roster.  Organization and ball handling are vital to beating Cornell and I’m just not sure if there will be enough of that from the home team here. 

What George Mason does have are athletes, Ronald Polite III is a veteran point guard and I think this could end up being a decent Patriots team but I don’t have high hopes for George Mason having success against Cornell’s relentless style of play.  Cornell is going to press, they are going to push tempo at every opportunity and that could be an issue for a George Mason squad that turned the ball over 27 times across two games where they were heavy favorites against Monmouth and Austin Peay. Cornell is an absolute nightmare to play against for teams that are unorganized so, while this roster is full of talented players, they haven’t played together very long and I just don’t think this unit is cohesive enough to put it together for 40 minutes against Cornell.  George Mason isn’t a group of sharpshooters so the Patriots could find some success breaking Cornell’s pressure and getting easy rim runs but that’s easier said than done.  That requires great coaching and game planning and I’m just not sure Skinn is going to be able to outcoach Brian Earl in his third ever game as head coach.  Earl will have no problem preparing for George Mason because this is a Cornell team that lost one player from last year.  Earl has a system that’s tough to learn but all of these guys know it and it’s a big reason the Big Red have looked to be in midseason form out of the gate.  If this game were a month from now things might be different, but in mid-November Cornell should have a serious edge here.

Another reason I think Cornell is way undervalued here is last year’s numbers don’t tell the full story of the Big Red’s season.  Cornell wasn’t conditioned appropriately to play the pace Earl tried to play at and they simply ran out of gas down the stretch.  For that reason, Earl stressed conditioning this past offseason but what’s also going to ensure that doesn’t happen again is the fact this entire roster has now experienced how grueling a season playing in this style can be. Fatigue could set in at some point but I doubt that’s going to be the case in November, especially when Cornell had huge leads in their past two games and were able to run 10 deep.  I still have some concerns about Cornell defensively, which is why I was willing to take the points against the Big Red with Lehigh, but George Mason isn’t a team that can exploit this.  George Mason lacks shooters, the Patriots shot just 39.6 percent from the field against Austin Peay last time out so ultimately I think a lack of efficiency does the Patriots in here

Aside from playing at home there’s not much else that favors George Mason in this game.  I also don’t see this as a flat spot for Cornell this early in the season, especially when Cornell has been solid on the road.  Cornell already has wins at Lehigh and Fordham and I expect the Big Red to win another road game here.  Play on Cornell +3 (-110) for 4% (or 4 units)