on february’s last weekend, an apparently resurgent lion hoops crew returned to levien from its first ivy road sweep since 2008 for the final home set of the league season. they fell flat, getting whipped by both dartmouth and harvard. that sad parlay put a full stop to any hopes they might have had for an above average season. the boys must now must travel south in hopes of a second consecutive road sweep to finish the ivy campaign at 7 – 7. two wins will put them at 15 – 13 overall, which seems about right for a team that has not really played well since late december. by our lights, their only “outperforms” of the season were the win at new haven two weeks ago and the heroic loss to the kentucky juggernaut two weeks before christmas. compounding the lack of quality outings, four league home losses were, if not shameful, deeply disappointing. it has become all too clear that the 2014 – 15 edition of columbia basketball was hardly fierce at levien.
friday’s tangle with paul cormier’s big green provided twenty eight minutes of tightly contested ball. when chris mccomber drained a trey at the 11:50 mark of the second period to tie the contest at 51, though, the game was about to get away from our heroes. two baskets by connor boehm, who has historically tormented the lions but who had sat out the saint valentine’s day win up in new hampshire, were followed by a tommy carpenter layup and a dagger trey by malik gill just ahead of a time clock violation that put the margin at 60 – 51 with seven and a half minutes remaining and the boys in blue were done. it was the type of lethal play gill had regularly unleashed at mount saint michael’s in the bronx where he led coach tom fraher’s team to two new york state parochial school titles. his last second bomb was matched by john golden’s trey a bit later on an evening that those two hanoverians combined with standout alex mitola (whose 18 points led a parade of 6 dartmouths in double figures) to nail 54% of their three pointers. the 52 points contributed by coach cormier’s back courters were the difference in the game, dwarfing the 33 scored by kyle castlin (who posted a very solid 18 point, 9 rebound, 6 assist score card) and maodo lo (15 points). for the last ten minutes of the game dartmouth’s guards were a quarter of a step quicker than the lion defenders who worked admirably on defense for extended stretches but could not quite close out on the hot shooting hanoverian backcourt when it counted most. the defeat marked the second time in three years that cormier’s crew has swept smith’s charges of a season.
saturday night brought additional bitterness when tommy amaker’s defending ivy champeen crimson visited jam packed levien. we thought the cantabs might be ripe for a whipping having fallen to cornell the evening before making the always tiring trip from ithaca to morningside. allgame additionallyexpected an energized lion squad sending off the departing cory osetkowski, noah springwater and steve frankoski with a seniors’ night victory. but the harvards have downed the light blue 10 out of 11 times in recent history and this dust up would prove another sad recapitulation of that trend. whereas the big green had done in the boys with a back court attack, the crimson dished out most of their punishment up front. paulie b is on record as favoring yale’s justin sears as the ivies finest big man. harvard’s steve moundou-misi has clearly resented that opinion during his time in cambridge and has regularly wrecked up the lions in consequence. he dropped 22 on the boys while grabbing 8 boards a year ago february in harvard’s epic double ot 88 – 84 win at levien. on friday the thirteenth he tallied 14 while pulling down 10 rebounds as the cantabs defended lavieties gymnasium 72 – 68. this go round he scored 17 while hauling in 11 boards. he leads harvard in rebounding, but increases his contributions by fifty percent when playing columbia. not content with that, his scoring picks up by some sixty percent, jumping from 9 to 15.5 per game when he battles the light blue.
in the first half he was aided and abetted most by front court mate, and reigning ivy player of the year, wes saunders. the crimson jumped out to a quick 6 – 0 lead that was stretched to 9 -2 before columbia battled back and closed the deficit to 16 – 17 with a bit under nine minutes to go in the first stanza. from there to the half time buzzer, the crimson big men took turns scoring as moundou-misi and saunders tallied 15 of the next 20 cantab points to fashion a 37 – 24 lead for the visitors at the break. as they had in cambridge two weeks ago, columbia closed the gap quickly in the second period, largely on the strength of an active zone that frustrated the harvard attack for a good while and maodo lo’s scintillating offense. the berliner dropped 33 on harvard on 62 percent shooting from the field. had he been so efficient from the charity stripe, he would have flirted with a forty point game. when chris mccomber drained a trey with 12:07 on the clock, the lions were within four at 44 – 48. that was, however, as good as it would get. wes saunders staunched harvard’s bleeding with two free throws and corbin miller went off for 14 points in under five minutes. when miller sank an off balance foul line jumper garnering a free throw to boot at the 5:42 mark , the harvards were up 68 – 53 and it was time for the secret agent detail assigned to attorney general eric holder to start effecting their charge’s departure.
the proliferation of post season tournaments means that the light blue still might play past this weekend. but they need to win two. pennsylvania seems the unrivaled league doormat this campaign, but the idiosyncracies of officiating at the palestra make this a potential trap game for a lion squad that dismantled the quakers at levien the first weekend in february. if they come correct, the lions should travel to princeton to wrap the season with chips on their shoulders over the whippings they have taken from the tigers in their last two matchups. allgame will be in the bleachers at jadwin enjoying the payback. that will leave them with fifteen victories and hopes, perhaps ignoble, for a second tier tourney bid. whatever our disappointments, agng will be back with some analysis of the visit south and a final lion 2014 – 15 report card.
d up, peace out,
paulie b