I hate to say I told you so. Actually, I love saying that. And it applies here, as I was mocked for claiming before the season that this team would outperform last year's senior laden group.
What the Columbia basketball team had last year was John Baumann. What they have this year is heart.
The Lions showed it last night with a breathtaking 60-59 win over Harvard at Levien that left the again boisterous Columbia crowd wanting more. Talk about home court advantage, huh? The Lions have now won four games in a row at home and have bumped their Ivy League record up to 5-3.
More importantly, Princeton fell at Brown (a bad loss with a capital B), leaving the Lions' hopes for second place in the league wide open. If you take into account the fact that Columbia's 4 toughest games of the season (both Cornell games and road games at Penn and Princeton) are behind them, prospects seem good for an impressive and utterly shocking league performance from the 2008-2009 Lions.
Realistically though, Columbia was too sloppy last night against Harvard and were lucky to be in a position to win. Suspect coaching from the Ancient Eight's highest profile coach left the game wide open for Columbia when Tommy Amaker decided to try to kill the clock with a 4 point lead and 4 minutes remaining. The result of that brilliant strategy was 2 shot clock violations in 3 possessions and 0 points. On the other end, big baskets from Agho and Miller allowed the Lions to claw back into it, and Kevin Bulger's miracle floater sealed the deal.
A second or third place league finish will take a major offensive improvement from this team over the rest of the season. But the emergence of Jason Miller as the premier big man in the Ivy League and the steadily improving stellar play of superfrosh Noruwa Agho does give a fan hope...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment