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EASTON, Pa. - The Lafayette men's basketball team ran into a hot-shooting Cornell squad on Sunday afternoon at Kirby Sports Center as the Leopards fell by an 82-75 score.

It was a stellar homecoming for the Big Red's Donovan Wright, who played his high school ball at Blair Academy and is a native of Easton. Wright hit on 8-of-10 from beyond the arc in the game for a career-high 26 points to lead Cornell offensively. His previous career-high was seven against Siena a week ago.

"They came out much harder than us. We got behind early and just never caught up," head coach Fran O'Hanlon said. "They're a good basketball team. We obviously struggled, but we stayed in it till the end."

Junior Matt Klinewski put together another excellent performance offensively with 23 points on 9-of-13 shooting from the field. Klinewski has now scored 20 or more points in each of his last three games and double figures in all four contests this season.

"I think the objective to start the game was to try to get the ball inside and calm the offense down," Klinewski added. "My mid-range game was on today, so that helped us get a little comeback going at the end of the first half. My teammates are behind me all the time, so I'm going to keep shooting."

Classmate Eric Stafford added a career-high 10 points and tied a career-high with five assists, while senior captain Nick Lindner was the other Leopard in double-figures with 19 points on the afternoon.

The Leopards were efficient offensively, hitting at a 47.5 percent clip from the field (28-for-59) and a 56.3 percent mark from outside (9-for-16), but could not keep Cornell off the board long enough to stage a comeback. The Big Red hit on 30 of their 58 shots overall (51.7%) and made 14 of their 25 three-pointers on the day (56.0%).

An Auston Evans steal defensively led to a Klinewski layup in transition to start a game that featured a frenetic pace early. The sides put up 19 combined points over the first four minutes as two triples from Wright had Cornell up, 10-9.

However, Lafayette's offense cooled as Cornell's kept rolling. A 13-0 run was finally stopped by a Lindner drive and finish at the 10:03 mark, but five more from the visitors forced a Leopards timeout at 9:21, trailing by a 28-11 score.

A finish by freshman Myles Cherry, who led Lafayette in rebounding with seven boards on the day, made it 36-22 with 5:23 to go, but Cornell's shots kept falling, taking a 42-24 advantage into the final timeout of the half. A Klinewski post finish through a foul and a Stafford free throw cut it to 14 again at 42-28 and the Leopards were able to get into the halftime break down by just 12, 44-32.

The second half started opposite of the first as neither team could find the bottom of the net over the first three minutes. A triple from freshman Kyle Stout finally broke the drought to cut the lead to nine, but both sides traded buckets over the next couple possessions to make it 48-37 with 16 minutes to play.

Cornell kept the Leopards at bay, though, over the next four minutes as Lafayette couldn't cut into the lead, trailing by 14, 56-42, with 12 minutes on the clock. Then, the three's fell in again as Wright's sixth and another from Stone Gettings made it 62-45 with 8:53 remaining.

The Leopards got as close as 13 over the next five minutes, but Cornell went into the final timeout with a 14-point edge at 72-58. Lafayette's shots started to fall late, but it wasn't enough to threaten the lead as the Leopards ended up on the losing side of an 82-75 final.

Lafayette returns to Kirby Sports Center for two more contests to close out the month and a four-game homestand, beginning on Wednesday with a 7 p.m. tilt against Princeton. The Leopards then take a Thanksgiving break before hosting Drexel on Nov. 30 at 8 p.m.