upbeat at the first break

the columbia lions, seven weeks into their effort to climb out of the deepest despondency of their, let’s face it, less than brilliant history, visited lafayette last evening and grabbed the team’s first road victory of the season. the 57 – 45 win over an apparently lousy leopard squad is hardly mind altering but, now boasting a 5 – 9 record, the light blue have already exceeded last year’s total victories. truth be told, columbia should be no worse than 7 -7 and without too much imagination could be bragging about a gaudy (at least winning) 8 – 6 mark. we believe the next paragraph offers reasonable grounds for hope of a brighter future as our heroes pause for matters academic.

the day before thanksgiving, the lions led the suny-binghamton bearcats by eleven points with a little over 4 and half minutes remaining and by six with a mere 19 seconds to play. the central new yorkers refused to quit and managed to snatch an 81 – 79 win when their john mcgriff stole the ball and drained an off-balance three pointer with a mere four seconds remaining. a sloppy second half stretch in the december 9 battle versus the fairleigh dickinson knights allowed the visitors to rally from ten points down and build their own six point leave with eleven minutes remaining. from there on the teams exchanged body blows and short leads until avery brown got to the rim with 20 seconds to play and forced overtime. the extra period went badly for the light blue and the lucky visitors danced off the floor with a 79 – 76 win. another close one got away back on november 13 when the light blue fell at sacred heart 88 – 85. of course, the implication of these near misses can be flipped. good teams win the close ones. they close the deal. lesser squads fail at the decisive moments. those close battles were losses. just like the 75 – 35 fiasco at rutgers that opened the season for columbia or the nearly thirty point flop against umass lowell in the first home game of the campaign.

more indicative of the improvement of this squad over last season’s was the 73 – 66 loss to university maryland – baltimore county on december 6. this game was never deeply in doubt, but the young lions stayed in hailing distance of the retrievers. it is important to recall that this umbc five absolutely humiliated columbia last december, burying them by 38 points. by this one metric, the lions are much better than last year.

we submit a brief examination of personnel to deepen our argument of improvement at levien: last season, the only glaringly bright statistic for columbia was the 8.3 rebounds per game gathered by patrick harding. that number led the ivies. indeed, harding’s yeoman work on the defensive boards especially kept a number of the light blue’s ivy losses from being even worse. harding has moved on and one would think columbia’s rebounding would suffer. instead, the crew is averaging one rebound more per game (36.4 rpg v 35.3 in 2021-22). harding’s contribution to that team total has been made up, in part, by the three lions filling center in the rotation. the youngest member of this trio is lanky zine bedri, who pulls down a team leading 4.3 boards nightly. messr bedri is listed at 6′ 10″ and 225 lbs. though he looks a bit shorter and lighter, he clearly relishes the physical give and take among the wide bodies in the paint. this was most apparent in the 56 – 52 win over new hampshire on the first saturday of december at levien. messr bedri did not back down from the bully boy tactics of unh’s leading rebounder and scorer, clarence daniels. as the game clock wound down and both teams struggled for any advantage, bedri and daniels had to be separated by officials a couple of times as the big men battled for position in the paint before inbound plays. the “got you last” shenanigans may have been a bit high schoolish, but we loved bedri’s audacity in pushing the tit for tats to the last permissible moment. as he refines his footwork and better learns to take what a defense gives him, we expect the young algerian to be an important spoke of the lion offense. the second big man we would like to credit is jake tavroff, a 6’9,” 245 lb sophomore from oceanside, new york. tavroff is not the most graceful of athletes, but he works from beginning to end of any shift on the hardwood. he is grabbing 3.8 rebounds nightly. more importantly, he locates teammates with passes from down low and cagily moves out to the perimeter to set screens for them as well. these are two contributions to the attack that pat harding rarely, if ever, made. the final member of this front court committee is junior josh odunowo. at 6’6″ and 205 lbs he is the smallest of the three. he is also the most finished athlete at this point and hauls down four boards per game. as josh missed all of last season’s ivy schedule due to a severe, indeed life threatening, case of covid -19, we take his return to the court as an indication of columbia’s improving fortunes.

this burst of enthusiasm has prevented us from addressing the apparent limitations of this team – such as a dependable three point shooter, a tendency to neglect their defensive responsibilities on occasion and an almost criminal tendency to turn the ball over. all these issues will be examined via close attention to upcoming contests. first semester final exams have intruded upon the roundball schedule, and the lions will not play again until 4 p.m. on december 28 when maryland-eastern shore visits levien (our side bar schedule is incorrect about this game). on new year’s eve, columbia opens the ivy league campaign at home against defending league champions yale. the bulldogs have looked tough in the non-league campaign, but we remind readers that back in march 2019 coach engles brought an improving columbia squad to new haven and humbled the elis. allgame looks forward to another tightening of the bulldog leash as the cubs continue to improve.

d up, peace out

paulie b