done

contrary to reporting in the Columbia Spectator, it wasn’t until penn’s jackson donahue drilled an nba distance trey to seal the quakers win over harvard on saturday night that the columbia lions men’s basketball season ended.  columbia’s valiant rear guard effort  in new haven was irrelevant.  only a penn loss could have altered their fate. unfortunately, […] Read more »

staying alive! the lions stop the quakers

one day after playing perhaps their worst game of the year, a gritty lion squad ended the penn basketball team’s five game winning streak and put themselves in position to play in the first ivy league post season hoops tournament. it was the most thrilling new york – philly dust up in, almost exactly, 38 […] Read more »

downs and ups, a gritty lion squad gets ready to visit new england

the lions five traveled to philadelphia on february 10th and fell to a previously winless (in league) pennsylvania crew.  the failure is gruesome enough given the quakers’ previous ineptitude but columbia managed to revert to those behaviors it had seemed to overcome recently.  no one scored other than the core three – petrasek, hickman and […] Read more »

half way home

last weekend, the lion hoops crew split two rousing battles in front of nearly packed houses.  the games against yale and brown both featured the lions’ now tough, if not impenetrable, 2 – 3 zone, improved three point shooting and increased offensive contributions from the bench.  those three things resulted in a win over the […] Read more »

north and south, the ivy league season gets real

the columbia lions will journey to the finger lakes this saturday to commence the 2016 – 17 ivy league campaign. cornell’s big red should be subdued by a light blue squad that is starting to play some solid ball, but this trip is always tiring and thus dangerous.  coach engles’ crew must find the focus […] Read more »

a lot of fun but still a loss

when paulie b was undergraduating, he spent nearly as much time playing half court hoops as he did contemplating matters literary.  lacking a quick first step or reliable jump shot, he depended on enthusiastic rebounding, pestiferous hand checking defense and the setting of hard screens to stay on the floor.  the experience  left your correspondent […] Read more »

of two minds

the new columbia hoops season is one road trip and two home games old and allgame has already been treated to the menu of  frustrations and thrills this crew can provide.   the home opener versus army was our first opportunity to watch coach engles’s up tempo lions.  fourteen minutes into the game, columbia led by […] Read more »

o brave new world! lions tip off the 2016 – 17 campaign

last time out we bade hail and farewell to the departing quartet of lion hoopsters (messrs lo, rosenberg, mullins and cohen) who had so wonderfully entertained us.  we wished them godspeed in the (less than) prestigious c.i.t. tournament where the boys proceeded to do  themselves and their fans proud, running the field and hoisting a […] Read more »

a valedictory

the 2015 ivy league basketball season ended  at levien gymnasium on the first saturday of march. a championship banner was raised, but it was decidedly too dark a blue. the yale five claimed their first ncaa tournament berth since 1962 and will carry the hopes of all elite eight hoops fans into the arena in […] Read more »

short

columbia’s basketball team has won 20 games for the second time in the last three years and will almost certainly be playing after the end of the ivy league season. unless an incalculably unlikely series of events transpire, however, they will not be playing in the big dance, the ncaa tournament.  what a bitter draught […] Read more »