January 4, 2026
An upstate upset: How Cornell pulled off a win for the ages against Columbia
Cornell came in with unshakeable confidence and the defending champion felt the pressure
When the final buzzer sounded inside Levien Gymnasium on Saturday, Cornell celebrated one of the biggest upsets in Ivy League women’s basketball history. Despite having a 1.7% chance to win before the game began, the Big Red beat Columbia 67-60 in both teams’ conference opener.
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Cornell entered Saturday with a 4-8 record, having lost five straight games by an average of 20.8 points. It ranked 324th out of 363 Division I teams and last in the Ivy League in the NET, and its best win had come against NET No. 248 Siena.
In contrast, Columbia was 9-4 and ranked 58th in the NET entering Saturday. The Lions have won at least a share of the past three Ivy League regular-season titles, and they’d clinched the outright title last season with a 33-point win over Cornell in the same gym. They had also beaten Cornell eight straight times overall and six straight times at home before Saturday.
It was David versus Goliath, plain and simple. And by at least one metric — Her Hoop Stats rating — it was the largest upset in Ivy League play since at least 2009.
“We’ve worked so hard this week and, honestly, this entire season for moments like this,” senior forward Emily Pape told ESPN+’s Lance Medow postgame.
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The upset didn’t happen because the Lions overlooked the Big Red. Columbia head coach Megan Griffith recognized the danger that Cornell posed in its second season under head coach Emily Garner.
“They’re physical. They’re a tough team,” Griffith told reporters on Thursday. “They’re going to make you work; they’re going to push you off your spots. So yeah, I think we’re starting to see [Garner’s] brand, for sure.”
Cornell won because it hit a season-high 10 3-pointers, had more belief when it was tested, and finally put together the complete game it had been chasing throughout nonconference play.
Cornell was coming off a 32-point loss at Stanford on Dec. 28, yet that game helped give the Big Red some confidence. They won the second quarter by 3 points, which showed them that, at their best, they could play with anybody. Garner told The IX Basketball on Saturday that her message after the Stanford game was, “We can win these quarters. Now, what happens when we put together 40-plus minutes?”
So all week in practice leading up to the Columbia game, Cornell focused on playing a complete 40 minutes. The team played 10-minute scrimmages and five-possession games, aiming to win all of those minutes and possessions. The coaches sometimes built in lulls or extra discussion time right before scrimmages, which was meant to simulate halftime and practice responding well out of the break.
Garner also didn’t think her team was fully ready for Stanford’s pressure coming off the Christmas break, so she made sure it was prepared for Columbia’s. Assistant coach Colleen Corcoran, who had the scout for Columbia, jumped in full-court drills to make the offense play five-on-six until it crossed halfcourt. The result was that Cornell had just 11 turnovers against Columbia, down from 21 against Stanford, and lead guards Kelsey Langston and Paige Engels combined for just two, down from 10.
Overall, Garner saw her team’s intensity in practice ramp up ahead of conference play, which she credited to the team’s leaders.
The Big Red also prepared mentally by meeting with their sports psychologist, Greg Shelley, on Friday. He talked to them about seizing the opportunity and “having the courage in big moments,” Garner said.
The players seemed to take Shelley’s words to heart. Their body language throughout the game showed how confident they were, even deep into the shot clock. And Pape said that when things got tense, they kept telling themselves that they could beat anyone.
Cornell led for more than 32 minutes, forcing Columbia to chase the game and putting the pressure on the defending champions. Cornell’s 10-for-19 shooting from 3-point range essentially offset Columbia’s 36 paint points, and Columbia couldn’t score enough off of Cornell’s turnovers to get in a rhythm offensively. In fact, the Big Red had 4 more points off turnovers than the Lions did, plus a season-high 20 assists.
“When we moved the ball, we got some clean threes,” Garner said. “We got some stationary threes, rather than on the move.”
The 6’1 Pape, who was named Ivy League Player of the Week after scoring 24 points against Stanford, had another big game against the Lions. On the season, a career-high 55.6% of her shots are 3-pointers, and Griffith said on Thursday that Columbia hadn’t seen a stretch forward quite like her yet. On Saturday, Pape had a team-high 19 points on 4-for-10 3-point shooting, six rebounds, an assist, a block and a steal.
“We want her to shoot those shots, and I think we’ve preached all year for her to be confident in her shot,” Garner said. “Oftentimes, she creates a lot of mismatch opportunities for us because she’s able to play the four with her size, but it takes people out of their comfort zone in terms of getting post players out of the paint. So [it’s] definitely something that we’re happy with.”
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Pape’s frontcourt partner, 6’ junior Rachel Kaus, also had a strong game with 15 points, five rebounds and two steals. Both Kaus and Pape have sped up their shooting motions this season, which has helped them against taller defenders.
“[Kaus has] one of the biggest hearts of any player I’ve coached,” Garner said. “She just goes down there and works and grinds and fights. … So, yeah, I mean, when the two of them have a day, it’s a good day for us.”
The Big Red also had two guards score in double figures. Junior Clarke Jackson had 12 points, a team-high seven rebounds and a team-high seven assists. And sophomore reserve Audrey Chen had 12 points on 3-for-3 shooting from behind the arc in just 18 minutes, which helped Cornell’s bench outscore Columbia’s 18-0.
“Audrey’s one of the hardest workers on the team, and I’m incredibly proud of her,” Pape said. “… I always tell her to just keep shooting. And that’s kind of the tone of our team: Just keep working. Keep shooting.”
Meanwhile, Cornell’s defense has struggled this season, allowing opponents to shoot one of the highest percentages from the field in the country. But on Saturday, it held Columbia to 41.4% shooting overall and 25.0% from 3-point range. It also stifled Lions junior Riley Weiss, who had surpassed 1,000 career points in her previous game and led the Ivy League in scoring at 18.5 points per game entering Saturday.
Against Cornell, Weiss had just 5 points on 1-for-14 shooting, including 1-for-9 from 3-point range. It was her lowest total in over a year and the worst shooting percentage of her career when attempting more than five shots. Langston was Weiss’ primary defender, and Garner praised how Langston fought through screens, contested shots and made Weiss shoot farther from the basket.
“[Weiss is] just a tremendous player,” Garner said. “… I think part of it was our defense, and part of it was it just may not have been her night.”
In Garner’s view, Cornell won the game in the third quarter. The Big Red won both the second and the third quarters, but in the second, they led the entire way. In the third, they had to handle Columbia taking a lead shortly after halftime, get back in front, watch Columbia jump ahead again, and recover again.
“What we told the team [in a third-quarter timeout] is, ‘Let’s enjoy it,’” Garner said. “‘This is what we’ve practiced, this is what we’ve worked on, this is what we’ve talked about. So let’s enjoy this moment, and let’s kind of punch back.’
“And that’s what we were able to do. … We continued to fight and continued to believe. And I think getting some stops in big moments also helped that momentum.”
Columbia’s last lead came on a fast-break layup by Marija Avlijas with 5:59 left in the third quarter. Pape put Cornell back in front 20 seconds later, and the lead grew to 7 at the end of the third quarter and 12 with 3:29 left in the fourth.
Then the Big Red just had to hang on. Garner said she couldn’t exhale until the final buzzer, knowing that the Lions had staged late comebacks to beat teams like Butler, Seton Hall and UTSA.
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But Columbia couldn’t pull one off this time, despite cutting the lead to 4 in the final seconds. Griffith told the Columbia Spectator postgame that the Lions are still finding their identity after guards Kitty Henderson and Cecelia Collins graduated last spring. With them sitting courtside instead of battling on the court, the Lions didn’t have enough self-belief when shots didn’t fall and things got hard.
“It’s the confidence piece. It’s the belief in what you’re doing,” Griffith said. “… Cornell literally had nothing to lose. … And today, we were playing under pressure for whatever reason, and it’s like, every time I just saw a lot of blank stares. And so that’s something we gotta work through as a group.”
At the same time, Griffith is trying not to make the loss seem bigger than it is. There are 13 regular-season Ivy games left, and even though the Lions now have as many regular-season conference losses as they did all last season, it’s something they can come back from. Griffith pointed to the 2022-23 Princeton team, which lost its first two conference games to Harvard and Columbia but didn’t lose again until the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
But for Cornell, the win is huge — both for this year’s team and for what Garner is trying to build long-term. In Year 1 of her tenure last season, everything was new to everyone. This season, the Big Red returned a league-best 87% of their minutes, but they hadn’t put all the pieces together until Saturday. The win proved that things are moving in the right direction and gave Garner by far her biggest win as a Division I head coach.
“As a coaching staff, we’re proud, but we’re not satisfied,” Garner said. “I think we know what we’re capable of doing defensively, and … we need to continue to stay bought into our system [and] continue to grow as a team. But this is a big step forward in terms of our growth. I think it helps our players see what they’re working towards and what they’re working for. And I thought this was a true team win. Everybody owned their role.”
When the buzzer went off, the Big Red spilled onto the court and briefly celebrated before going through the handshake line. And as they boarded the bus for the four-hour drive home, director of basketball operations Vanese Barnes added an urgent item to her to-do list: Find a place to stop for ice cream on the way.
Written by Jenn Hatfield
Jenn Hatfield is The IX Basketball's managing editor, Washington Mystics beat reporter and Ivy League beat reporter. She has been a contributor to The IX Basketball since December 2018. Her work has also appeared at FiveThirtyEight, Her Hoop Stats, FanSided, Power Plays, The Equalizer and Princeton Alumni Weekly.
