Read more: Cornell, Big Red, College, NCAA Basketball
NEW YORK CITY (AP) -- Jeff Foote's smile was big even for a 7-footer.
The senior center had 19 points, 11 rebounds and five blocks and was selected as the most valuable player of the Holiday Festival after leading Cornell to a 71-66 victory over St. John's on Monday night at Madison Square Garden.
"This is surreal," said Foote, who was 8 of 10 from the field. "I was the MVP once before in a high school tournament. To be MVP on this stage is unreal."
Jon Jaques had 20 points for the Big Red (9-2), who won this tournament for the first time in four appearances, the last in 1970.
"We couldn't have executed better in the halfcourt than we did in second half," Cornell coach Steve Donahue said. "When a kid Foote's size does that and doesn't make a mistake finding cutters and going one on one, it is really difficult for teams if you have a guy playing that well."
The Big Red advanced to the title game when Ryan Wittman hit a 30-footer at the overtime buzzer for a 91-88 victory over Davidson.
The big 3-point shot this game came from Jaques.
His fifth and final 3 in six attempts gave Cornell a 67-62 lead with 31 seconds left.
"Jon played out of his mind offensively but he was even better on defense and he was guarding Big East players," Donahue said.
Dwight Hardy had 19 points for the Red Storm (9-2), who were in the Festival for the record 44th time and were looking for their 15th title and first since 2005.
"That team can beat any team in the country when they're hot," St. John's coach Norm Roberts said. "They can definitely win a game in the (NCAA) tournament so it was a great game for us to learn from."
Both teams were 7 of 11 from 3-point range in the first half and Cornell kept it up in the second going 4 of 7 while the Red Storm cooled off to 4 of 14.
"Our game plan was to hopefully force them to shoot from a distance and that didn't look very smart when they were making them," Donahue said. "But teams can fall into a trap, bad habits. They weren't driving as hard as they could and weren't defending as hard as they could."
St. John's advanced to the final with a solid defensive effort in a 72-60 victory over Hofstra. The Red Storm didn't have that against Cornell, especially guarding the 3.
"We kind of forgot our principles and gave them a lot of open looks," said D.J. Kennedy, who had 15 points for St. John's. "We've been going at 3-point shooters pretty good all season. We knew Cornell was a great 3-point shooting team and we kind of let down a little bit."
Foote gave Cornell, which shot 57.1 percent overall (24 of 42), the lead for good with a move down low that made it 62-60 with 2:27 to play.
"We guarded them for 32 seconds a few times and then they made a basket," Roberts said. "Give them a lot of credit. They held strong and a lot of teams don't do that."
Louis Dale had six points and five assists and became Cornell's career leader in assists. The senior guard came into the game needing three assists to break the mark of 369 set by Chuck Rolles from 1953-56.
(Copyright ©2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
