With a raucous crowd rocking the house, the Cornell Big Red men's basketball team rolled over Brown, 74-65, before a near-sellout audience of 4,254 at Newman Arena on Saturday night.

Cornell also defeated Yale on Friday night at Newman. With the back-to-back wins, the Big Red team improved its Ivy League record to a perfect 10-0. The team is now two wins from its first National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball tournament berth in two decades and only its third in the last half-century. Big Red has won 14 out of the last 15 games and has recorded its first 12-game winning streak since 1964-65. Better yet, the Big Red overall record is 18-5, the most season wins for Cornell in 40 years (1968-69). It took perennial national powerhouse Duke to hand this team its most recent loss, Jan. 6.

With so many wins, no wonder the Cornell students and fans filled Newman Arena with the thunder of voices, ear-splitting screeches and deafening cheers. Local news reporters concurred that Saturday's game drew the noisiest home crowd in memory. Despite trailing during the entire first half, the so-called Newman Nation roared when the Pep Band started playing Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life," and the crowd burst into one large chorus for Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part Two" -- better known as "The Hey Song" -- in the second half.

Cornell fell 12 points behind Brown with 6:45 remaining in the first half. Not to be deterred, the Big Red relied on two important three-point field goals from junior guard Adam Gore, and field goals from senior forward Jason Hartford and sophomore guard Geoff Reeves, to slice Brown's lead to two points by halftime, 33-31.

The crowd witnessed six lead changes in the second half and was stirred into a frenzy when Cornell grabbed the lead for good when Reeves sank a field goal with 6:13 remaining in the game. With 2:19 left on the clock, Cornell's Jeff Foote -- a 7-foot center and a junior from nearby Lockwood, N.Y., and playing in only his 17th college game ever -- slammed home a sure-handed dunk to bolster the Big Red lead, 66-59. From that point on, Newman Arena exploded into cheers that rivaled a sustained sonic boom.

With two more wins, Cornell can propel itself into the NCAA tournament on an automatic bid -- and clinch the Ivy League title -- this coming weekend. The Big Red hosts Dartmouth on Friday and Harvard on Saturday, starting at 7 p.m. If Brown loses its first game this weekend and Cornell wins, then the Big Red will clinch on Friday night.

The men's team last played in the NCAA tournament in March 1988, when it lost to the University of Arizona. Before that, the Big Red lost to both Navy and North Carolina State in the March 1954 NCAA tournament.

Meanwhile, Cornell's women's basketball team defeated Brown, 65-41, at the Pizzitola Center in Providence on Saturday night. With this victory, the women set a new school record for conference wins in a season (nine) and extended its winning streak to eight games, breaking a 33-year-old program record for consecutive games won. The Big Red women remain atop the Ivy League standings with a 9-1 record, 17-6 overall.