Cornell's performance was better than you think

There have been quite a few impressive performances thus far in the tournament. Ohio dominated third-seeded Georgetown en route to a 14 point upset. Butler and St. Mary's both used dominating second halves to beat UTEP and Richmond, respectively, and advance to the second round.

But the most impressive performance of the first round may end up being Cornell's domination of the Temple Owls.

No, I'm not an idiot. While its true that I didn't pick Cornell to win this game, its not because I didn't Cornell was good. Its because I thought Temple was that much better.

The numbers don't lie. According to Kenpom, Temple is the third best team in the country in terms of defensive efficiency and first in the country in defense effective FG percentage. (For those that are new to tempo-free stats, defensive efficiency is the number of points a team allows per possession, while effective FG percentage factors in that going 2-6 from three is equivalent to shooting 3-6 from inside the arc.)

In other words, there is a good argument to be made that Temple is the best defensive team in the country.

And Cornell carved up the Owl's defense with the surgical precision of Dexter Morgan.

Seriously, I don't think you understand how impressive this performance was by Cornell. The Big Red shot 68.4% in the first half, and were still over 60% late in the second half. They hit nine threes.

It gets better.

Coming into the game, the Owls had only allowed an opponent to average more than a point per possession (an efficiency over 100) six times on the season, and only once was that number above 111 -- when Temple was manhandled 84-52 by a Kansas team that would have beaten the Nets that day. Cornell finished the game with an offensive efficiency of 135.4, the fourth best performance by the Big Red on the season. They were only better against Dartmouth, Brown, and Yale. Not exactly a murderer's row.

Cornell's eFG% was 65.4%, which was their fifth best performance of the year and the second-worst given up by Temple on the season.

Tempo-free numbers are what they are: numbers.

Anyone watching this game knows that Cornell thoroughly dominated this game.

But looking at those tempo-free stats should tell you just how impressive the Cornell performance was.