the last days of 2024 and the earliest of 2025 have not been happy for the cmbb team. from the proud height of a program best 11 – 1 start, they have stumbled to 11 – 5 overall and a league worst 0 – 3 in the ivies. some quick synopses of the last four games and a look at the programmatic shortcomings of the moment will provide a bit of clarity about the team’s present distress. are these dark days a foretaste of another, finally, unsuccessful season or merely some front loaded misery two weeks into the ivy campaign?
on december 30, the lions visited piscataway, new jersey and took on coach steve pikiell’s rutgers crew. the scarlet knights had been one of the buzziest stories in the preseason thanks to their landing two of the nation’s most highly regarded first years – forward ace bailey and guard dylan harper. both players are nba bound though how soon they middlesex county for more lucrative playing fields has yet to be determined. in any case, the lions hung around for a half and trailed by only nine at the break, 44 – 35. the game remained competitive, if not compelling, for a while longer and when kenny noland drained a trey at the 14:07 mark, the light blue was within eight at 54 – 46. two minutes and ten seconds later, however, the home team had stretched their advantage when dylan harper nailed a triple to close a quick flurry of rutgers scoring. for the next eight minutes, the knights did all their damage inside and built an 82 – 58 lead. three treys down the final three minutes were the final nails in the lions 91 – 64 loss. the most dismal of many telling stats – columbia was out rebounded 45 – 31 and turned the ball over fourteen times to rutgers’ four. team scoring leader geronimo rubio de la rosa followed his 27 point masterpiece against the fairfield stags with 17 points but shot a mediocre 3 – 11 from three point distance. ace bailey led the way for the scarlet knights with 24 and his running mate, messr harper contributed 16.
twelve days later, the light blue opened the ivy league schedule by hosting cornell. the big red are now led by former assistant coach jon jaques who has slid over to the departed brian earle’s courtside seat. jaques oversees the same high tempo, quick shooting, multiple combination offense installed by his predecessor. the cornell crew attacks the rim and then kicks passes out to the three point line where unguarded sharpshooters wait to draw blood. on the afternoon of saturday january 11, the two main executioners were cooper noard and jacob beccles. noard settled on hitting a paltry 75% of his three point attempts going 6 – 8 from deep. beccles shot less often but hit them all going 5 – 5 from the perimeter. though these two ithacans led the way with 20 (noard) and 23 (beccles), another eight of the visitors got into the score book led by ak okereke with twelve, nazir williams with ten and jake fiegen with nine. their ensemble work was sufficient to craft a twenty point lead at halftime, 51 – 31. as they did frequently over the last two dismal seasons, the lions rallied quickly out of the break and closed within nine points, at 58 – 49 with 16:05 to play. four minutes later, however, the lead was back to nineteen for the big red via a run fueled by two three pointers and two lay ups from beccles. the jig was up and cornell coasted to a 94 – 83 win. regardless of the final score and the fact that columbia did not shoot that much worse than the big red (going 12 – 28 from deep versus cornell’s 14 – 27), the game never felt close. not surprisingly, it was not one of the lion’s best players better games. geronimo rubio de la rosa scored 15 second half points after being shut out in the first stanza and again struggled from deep going 3 – 9. though allgame had forecast a lion advantage on the boards via the three man center rotation of zine beddri, jake tavroff and mason ritter, cornell battled them evenly. only tavroff had a fine day rebounding grabbing eight. beddri, who had snatched 17 rebounds versus fairfield, only managed two. the three centers scored a combined five points.
the stunned lion fans who reconvened on saturday january 18 wondered how competitive their heroes would be against defending league champion yale. the elis are a shadow of last year’s squad having lost 7′ 1″ center danny wolf to the university of michigan (where he leads in most statistical categories) and power forward matt knowling who has decamped for usc. notwithstanding those departures, the bulldogs remain a tough out by relying on untiring defense (led by two time ivy defensive player of the year bez mbeng), team rebounding, and the offensive fire power supplied by three point assassin senior john poulakidas and the pesky work of classmate, the 6’7″ nick townsend. unlike the flop against cornell, the lions battled their visitors evenly from the jump and held a 40 – 39 lead as a half in which neither squad had more than a four point lead ended. the second half was similarly tight though the lions crafted a seven point lead by the 10:41 mark when de la rosa scored to make it 61 – 54. from there, however, the bulldogs steadily battled back and grabbed a 68 – 67 advantage when nick townsend sent home a layup with 6:24 to play. the lions were still down two points (73 – 71) a minute and a half later when allgame saw poulakidas on the north side of the gymnasium motion bez mbeng cross court to set a screen. the 6′ 5″ forward then dragged his defender across the lane into first townsend and then mbeng before receiving a pass and turning to drain a dagger trey. that meant a five point lead for the elis with 4:24 to play. though poulakidas led the yale stat sheet with 29 points, the game finally turned on yale’s relentless attack on the backboards. they hammered the lions by a 46 – 29 rebounding margin and, especially late in the second period, seemed to have the livelier legs and greater will to get to any missed shot. they also shot ten more free throws than columbia and in a game that ended 92 – 88, those foul shots were crucial.
two days later, columbia traveled down a snow edged i95 for a mlk day matinee versus the princeton tigers. mitch henderson’s team is led by two serious candidates for ivy league player of the year, junior guard xaivian lee and his classmate forward caden pierce. they came into the game boasting a 13 – 4 record which included one point wins over rutgers, akron and dartmouth. columbia has not won at jadwin gymnasium since 2012 and has gone 2 – 22 against tiger squads overall during that period. nonetheless, the home team came out catatonically flat against the lions, shooting miserably and trailing by eighteen at halftime, 33 -15. though welcome, that lead could not have provided lion fans with great pleasure as our heroes owed their advantage more to princeton’s struggles (going 2 – 19 from the three point stripe, for instance) than any bravura work by the light blue. the lions continued to lead through the first twelve minutes of the second period and held a 57 – 38 advantage after a mason ritter dunk with 7:46 to play. from that giddy point, columbia bled out slowly, again demonstrating tired legs and their vulnerability to an aggressive full court press. with 1:50 to play, the tigers pulled within two points at 65 – 63 on a blake peters trey. fifteen seconds later the decisive moments of the game occurred. with 1:18 to play, messr lee missed a layup but grabbed his own offensive rebound. he went up again and had this second effort blocked by mason ritter. again lee managed to snag the loose ball and with :59 remaining went up for a third attempt which was again blocked by ritter. this time blake peters corralled the offensive rebound, stepped outside the arc and drained a trey with fifty one seconds remaining. the tigers led 66 – 65. a ritter layup ten seconds later restored a one point columbia advantage, but the light blue was done. over the last forty seconds the game book shows three princeton rebounds to none for the lions and a lee three pointer as well as two peters’ free throws to close the scoring in a 71 – 67 columbia defeat.
those four paragraphs of recap bring us to the present moment. in three hours, the 0 – 3 columbia lions tip off against the 1 – 2 penn quakers at the palestra in philadelphia. this quaker squad relies on 6’5″ junior guard ethan roberts (17 ppg) and 6’9″ senior center nick spinoso (13 ppg and 7 rebounds nightly) to compete. columbia has had trouble controlling spinoso in the paint over the last couple of seasons and will have to get much more efficient defensive play and rebounding from its big men than they have provided at the outset of the ivy campaign. penn is one of the teams the lions need to beat twice in order to get to the league tournament in march. they need to shake off the chagrin of having lost two winnable games in a three game losing streak and regain the efficiency they demonstrated back in november and early december.
peace out and d up,
paulie b