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 eight.  with just under three to go in the first stanza, the margin was still seven, with the lions up 36 – 29.  less than a minute later, the game was tied off  treys from cadets jordan fox and adam roe.  at 1:30, the lions trailed 36 – 39 thanks to a three from john emezie.  the columbia drought continued for another ninety seconds (and two more treys from cadet fox) until luke petrasek tallied a layup with time expiring.  the boys went to the locker room down by seven while those of us in the stands contemplated the first half’s dizzying denouement.

the lions exploded out of  the break and within four minutes had tied the game on an exhilarating drive and free throw by nate hickman.  they stretched their lead to 75 -64 off a rodney hunter layup with 7:47 remaining.  from there on, though, columbia would score but eight more points while army ran off twenty two behind the inside scoring of matt wilson and the three point efforts of messr emezie.  the light blue’s last gasp came with :08 on the clock when hickman(who tallied 30) missed a rushed thirty footer that would have tied the game.  two free throws from the black knights concluded the evening’s entertainment with columbia on the short end of an 88 – 83 stick.

happily, at this time of year, games abound and by saturday afternoon, allgame was back at levien to hurl scorn at the red raiders from colgate.  going into this year’s battle, the lions had won five straight from the upstaters, but the games have usually been hard fought.  indeed, the one back in december of 2013 was a humdinger with the lions winning at colgate in double ot behind one of alex rosenberg’s best efforts.  this edition of the raiders has beaten only cornell, but that one win was enough for us to expect the usual sort of dust up.  imagine then our swelling confidence when luke petrasek stepped up to lead the scoring parade and nate hickman was joined in his back court heroics by first year mike smith and sophomore quinton adlesh (who have become the two-headed point guard for this year’s light blue) and lukas meisner asserted himself on the backboards.  with a minute and a half left in the first half, columbia led by 24 on a chris mccomber lay up.  colgate managed to tally the last eight on a lay up and trey from jordan swopshire sandwiched around a triple from sean o’brien, but the game seemed well in hand off columbia’s best twenty minutes of the young campaign.

good allgame readers!  count not your chickens, i implore you.  the lions who shot 54% from beyond the arc in the first stanza would sink a measly 2 of 10 from there in the second half.  colgate, meanwhile, shot pretty much 40% in both halves.  that combination of steady mediocrity and catastrophic fall off in production resulted in a slow, twenty minute deflation of the columbia lead.  with 14 seconds left in regulation, mike smith turned the ball over and colgate had an opportunity to diagram its last gasp.  columbia came out of its defensive huddle and incredibly, with a three point lead, neglected to foul anyone.  you have to foul someone not in the act of shooting a three pointer in that situation!  give them their foul shots or let them try to miss the second and get a desperation rebound, but you must foul!  columbia chose to defend the play and that unfathomable decision culminated in sean o’brien’s trey with five seconds remaining to tie the game at 67.  overtime beckoned.

our nauseous fury had barely settled when the crews began the extra period.  again, columbia moved out to a lead, this time at 74 – 69 with 2:40 to go, behind the shooting of hickman and petrasek.  the raiders would not quit, however, and tied it up behind swopshire and nathan (who he?) harries.  a tip in from the lions’ adlesh and a couple of petrasek free throws balanced a swopshire foul shot and yet another three from harries.  then with only three seconds left and the score knotted at 78, hickman gathered a pass from mike smith, took one step and drained a thirty five footer.  81 – 78, columbia fashions a dramatic win.

some of you may remember evonne goolagong cawley, the immensely talented and very successful australian tennis player of the 70’s and early 80’s, who was never quite so successful as some of her boosters thought she should have been (10 grand slams being, apparently, small beer).  the source of her shortcomings, it was said, was an occasional tendency to go “walkabout,” to lose the mental and emotional focus necessary to battle through to triumph.  this lion squad seems to suffer from some version of the same malady.  they can play terrific, fast paced, offense but sometimes fail to make the final switch to shut off an open shooter on the three point line or fail to box out a pesky rebounder who can put back an easy lay in or fail to commit a necessary foul.  that last tort belongs to coach engles by our lights, but he’ll get a pass for now as the lions managed a victory despite the glaring error.  no time to look back now, hofstra invades levien tonight.  the long islanders must be destroyed. go blue!

d up and peace out,

paulie b