dark days

columbia men’s basketball team stands at 1 – 9 with one game remaining before the holiday break.  according to kenpom.com they are the best one win team in the nation and have played the ninth toughest schedule.  so lion fans have those stats to meditate on in these very short, very dark days.   allgame urges all its readers to keep a firm grip on the ledge realizing that the schedule has not been kind to our heroes.  seven straight road contests would test any crew and columbia’s team is very young.  the season began at an apex of difficulty against top ranked villanova.  the wildcats and penn state’s nittany lions were the strongest of those early opponents and they both dropped the light blue by better than a dozen.  since then, though, the lions have been in every game.  a good shooting army team whipped the boys by ten at west point in what should have been, at worst, a closer loss.  colgate shot lights out in the first half up in hamilton but had to hold on for dear life to stymie a couple of columbia rallies.  in perhaps the most frustrating fail of the non-league schedule, the uconn huskies came from fifteen points back early in the second half to humble the lions in overtime 77 – 73.   the most entertaining dust up in this losing streak came against albany where the great dane’s david nichols went bucket for bucket with columbia’s mike smith in a wild second half and led the home team to an 86 – 82 win.  an even closer run thing played out two night later when quinnipiac’s bobcats shutout the lions over the game’s final three minutes and rallied behind the shooting of joe kelly to hand columbia its first home court defeat of the season 89 – 87.  three nights later, stony brook rode a standout performance (30 points, 8 rebounds) from yeboah akwasi to a ten point win.  the arc of failure concluded with a five point loss to navy on sunday the 10th in a game that featured mike smith’s career high 28 point outburst.  that exhilarating 11 – 15 shooting display could not offset the midshipmen’s efficiency down low, where center evan wieck who was a perfect 7 – 7 from the field while helping to hold the lion big men to just six total points as navy rallied from 15 points down to win, 73 – 68.

an immensely patient coach engles has pointed out that a basket here or there in any of these games might have altered the outcomes.  we understand his glass half full point of view.  nevertheless, we see a few issues that the team needs to address if their campaign is to be righted and the ivy league tourney made a realistic goal.  first, the team needs to shoot free throws better.  the loss to navy translates directly to the five foul shot difference in the scorecard.  no one has seemed truly solid at the charity stripe save messr smith.  this deficiency is extremely difficult to correct in season as jim boeheim’s experience at syracuse has long proven.  the orange has managed to win despite the historical incompetence of some of its best teams at the free throw line.  columbia does not have the compensating offensive efficiency to give away free points.  their inadequacy has been costly enough already, but it will be fatal in the ivy league.  at the moment, only penn shoots foul shots more poorly among the ancient eighters.  secondly, the lions are losing the battle of the backboards pretty much nightly by an average of almost seven rebounds.  in the recent losses to stony brook and navy, the margin was ten.  this has been happening at a time that the offense is beginning to play at a pace that coach engles prefers.  a few more boards per game should translate into more shots and points as well as further limiting opponents opportunities.  rebounding is an important aspect of defense.  lukas meisner is being diligent about his work on the backboards, averaging just about seven per game.  we’d like to see improvement in this area from sophomore big man patrick tape and first year power forward jaron faulds.  tape is grabbing five boards per night while faulds is only gathering in three.  another two rebounds per athlete would amplify their value especially since both these guys have been solid defensively.  faulds, in fact,  leads the lions with fifteen blocks to date.

finally, the team has yet to put together two halves of solid play.  they dominated uconn in the first half up at storrs only to bleed away a big lead in the second half.  a similar melt down doomed them versus navy.  nor could they chase down colgate or army which both built early leads against the lions and then beat back repeated charges against their advantages.  this phenomeon has been reflected, somewhat, at the individual level.  mike smith has been outstanding over  the first six weeks of the season, averaging 19 point per game, 5 assists and 2 steals.  and he has picked it up lately, scoring at a 23 ppg clip during december.  but smith seems to score in streaks, lighting it up in one half but stalling in the other.  the stony brook and quinnipiac games highlighted this tendency vividly.  he scored 15 in the opening stanza against the bobcats but only 5 in the second period.  similarly he dropped 15 in the first against stony brook’s sea wolves while managing only 3 in the second.  those fall offs corresponded to the evaporation of ten point half time leads in both contests.  the rest of the squad has to pick mike up when he struggles or mike has to play even better than he is already.  an additional back court concern for coach engles is the play of nate hickman.  the senior started last year ablaze.  but since his 30 point explosion against army in november of 2016, he has been inconsistent.  his athleticism gets him to the rim but he has struggled to complete many of those drives.  his three point shot frequently disappears.  these shortcomings have resulted in a 3 point year to year drop off in his scoring average.  he has also been sloppy with the ball, at times, most glaringly in a six turnover performance against stony brook.  his length is important defensively, so coach engles must be very conflicted about sitting him down especially with his classmate kyle castlin still unavailable.  nonetheless, coach might have to think about playing his first year trio of myles hanson, gabe steffanini and tai bibbs a bit more to strengthen the team’s  back court play.

things won’t be any easier tonight when the lions tip off in chestnut hill against a boston college squad that must be soaring right now.  the eagles humbled imperial duke this sunday past.  let’s hope the giddiness of that win has not worn off and that they come out flat against the light blue.  after tonight, the boys shut it down until the last saturday of 2017 when maine’s brown bears come to levien.  a win or two for the yule tide would hit the spot.

peace out and d up

paulie b