All Game No Gossip

when paulie b was undergraduating, he spent nearly as much time playing half court hoops as he did contemplating matters literary.  lacking a quick first step or reliable jump shot, he depended on enthusiastic rebounding, pestiferous hand checking defense and the setting of hard screens to stay on the floor.  the experience  left your correspondent with an affection for similar behavior from more talented athletes.  he was gifted with a full measure of such sport  this past friday when albany’s great danes of the america east conference visited a half filled but very noisy levien for 2016’s final game.  the lions seem to have shaken off the sluggishness demonstrated in the beat down from seton hall and subsequent no show performance against navy.  a pre-holiday romp over div iii manhattanville back on december 11 was followed by the albany dust up in which the light blue fell 70 – 67.  the close run failure revealed a columbia team that is more attentive defensively than it had been earlier this season.  the 2 – 3 zone that was savaged by kevin willard’s pirates both inside and out was much livelier on december’s final friday and the boys moved promptly to cut off passing lanes and bottle up shooters (they held albany to 32% from the field).  despite these improvements, the score card annotates the decisive advantage of coach will brown’s crew on the foul line where they knocked down 24 of 28 free throws as opposed to the 12 of 18 recorded by the lions.  though the faithful in section c attributed this unconscionable difference to official incompetence, paulie b thinks it evidence of columbia’s still unresolved defensive inadequacies.

coming out of the frustrating losses to army and hofstra that sandwiched  an unnecessarily close win over colgate, coach engles complained of the lions sloppiness guarding opponents.  he suggested he might employ some zone defense to tighten things up.  the battle against seton hall on december one debuted a 2 -3 defense and the pirates smashed it – consistently getting the ball to their big men for easy scores down low or rotating the ball efficiently on the perimeter for open look treys.  the lions fell by 24 and looked utterly overmatched.   now three games into the 2 -3 experiment, the light blue seems far more active in the zone, cutting down passing lanes and hustling out to defend the three point line.  they still have not solved their vulnerability to penetrating guards – joe cremo of albany tallied 22 against them going to the rim and scoring or getting fouled and draining the free throws.  mike smith, nate hickman, quinton adlesh and c. j. davis all need to be quicker when opposing guards put the ball on the floor.  they have to force opponents a step further out on drives.  and the lion big men must be quicker to help when their teammates need them.  jeff coby, conor voss (who has been seeing much more regular time this senior season) and chris mccomber have to be clogging the lane and then rebounding the ball more aggressively.  the temporary absence of lukas meisner from the line up puts added pressure on all the bigs including the lions’ star, luke petrasek.  as it was, friday last, albany’s big men – mike rowley, greg stire and the unfortunately named dallas ennema – hammered the lions on the glass and came away with a couple of fistfuls of foul shots.

although the great danes were a perfect 10 – 10 from the stripe in the first half, they still trailed 30 -28 at intermission.  coach brown’s crew burst from the locker room to capture an early second half lead before the lions went on their best run of the evening, 11 straight points featuring two petrasek treys which resulted in an eight point lead.  they would stretch the advantage by another point on the second most entertaining play of the game when rodney hunter stole the ball and outlet it to quinton adlesh who hit patrick tape racing to the rim with a pass for a transition dunk.  with fourteen minutes remaining, columbia led by 9. and then, so fast as it had been crafted, so quickly was the edge undone.  a greg stire layup followed one by joe cremo before yet another by cremo.  cremo’s free throw and a jumper by david nichols tied it up with 11:45 remaining.  a minute later, albany grabbed a one point lead, and though the lions would tie it at 54 on nate hickman’s rafters raising slam, albany steadied and built a lead that though cut to one on mike smith’s trey with three ticks remaining could not be overcome.

fortunately, columbia bounced back quickly in january’s first contest and buried maine’s black bears up in bangor, 98 – 73.  they look ahead to the last non-conference game, versus a weak howard, this saturday hoping to begin  ivy play with a 6 – 7 record, hardly terrific but not bad for a largely rebuilt crew that played four big dance worthy squads.  they feature three go to scoring options: nate hickman, who was blazing hot early but is now struggling with his outside shot; mike smith, the spark plug freshman who has led the team in scoring over the last six games and is getting better defensively; and luke petrasek, the indispensable factotum who can score inside and out, rebounds and is the team’s best passer.  coach engles needs to find his most reliable fourth option while lukas meisner is sidelined and so far it looks to be quinton adlesh who comes off the bench ready to shoot.  right now, the lions look to be very much in the middle of the ivy pack.  albany provides an interesting way to evaluate columbia’s relative  ivy league strength – the great danes dropped cornell by ten and brown by four while losing to yale by four.  the lions, unsurprisingly, fall between amidst these outcomes.   league play is a week off and the newly instituted post-season tournament gives any of the ivies four best teams a shot at the big dance.  fourteen all important games await.

peace out, d up

paulie b

notes from the ou sont les neiges dantan dept:

allgame offers the following tidbits as new year treats.  coach smith decamped for the nation’s most beautiful western bay last spring to take first seat on the university of san francisco dons’ basketball bench.  he began his career in the wac helping to turn the st. mary’s program from twenty game losers to annual ncaa tourney contenders.  the task is probably more difficult at usf, but kyle is nothing if not confident and insists he knows what it takes to win in the league dominated by gonzaga, brigham young and his former employer.  he’s got his boys off to a quick start at 11 – 4 and we wish him godspeed as the league campaign heats up.

one of coach kyle’s most effective performers at columbia was canadian bred guard grant mullins.  a concussion suffered at princeton late in his sophomore year cost the kid a red shirt season.  ivy league athletic eligibility rules being what they are, that meant his senior year was his third and last in new york.  graduate school bound for ucal berkeley and with one year of ncaa eligibility remaining, grant joined coach cuonzo martin’s team and has made a fairly seamless transition to pac-12 hoops.  he’s averaging 9 points per game and just played his best 40 minutes of the season, leading his crew with 20 points (on 7 – 10 shooting including 5 – 8 from three) 4 rebounds and 4 assists over bobby hurley’s arizona state crew.  roar brown bears roar.

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

last time out we bade hail and farewell to the departing quartet of lion hoopsters (messrs lo, rosenberg, mullins and cohen) who had so wonderfully entertained us.  we wished them godspeed in the (less than) prestigious c.i.t. tournament where the boys proceeded to do  themselves and their fans proud, running the field and hoisting a champeenship banner at the tourney’s conclusion.  almost immediately, post-hoist, coach kyle smith grabbed a yellow cab for laguardia and his future life as the coach of the university of san francisco  dons.  the simultaneous departure of our stars and their guiding spirit left lion rooters understandably dizzy.

fortunately, a.d. peter pilling had smith’s replacement already sewn up and he seems an appropriate fit.  jim engles is a staten island boy who played prep hoops at st peter’s on richmond’s north shore and college ball at dickinson.  he worked as an assistant  at the  wagner and rider programs before joining coach joe jones on the sideline at columbia back in ’03 where he remained until 2008.  with the reconstruction of  columbia’s  program well underway and sufficiently prepared for greater responsibilities, he crossed the hudson to take charge of the terrible (putting it very mildly) n.j.i.t. program.  the highlanders were mired in a thirty plus game losing streak when engles showed up.  they would drop another nineteen straight before finally ending the drought against bryant.    that 1 – 30 season was followed by successively improving seasons culminating with a signature 72 -70 win over then 17th ranked michigan at ann arbor in december of 2014.  with the maraschino cherry of  two straight twenty plus win campaigns in hand, engles was ready to return to manhattan where, he says, he had been very happy during his prior residence.

we enthusiastically welcome engles, especially as he arrives bearing a particular gift – a tantalizingly attractive non-league schedule which includes four teams with top 100 rpi’s.  another way of characterizing its quality is to point out that it features six teams that won twenty plus games last season.  four of those crews went to the big dance and one played in the venerable n.i.t.  all of these teams find themselves in the same straits as the lions, looking to replace significant performers.  the two game weekend road trip opening the campaign epitomizes this situation.  on friday november 11, the lions travel east on long island’s north shore to battle the stony brook seawolves, a team that has whipped our heroes  three straight.  the long islanders will be debuting their own new head coach.  jeff boals  replaces the very successful steve pikiell who now runs the rutgers program.  boals has to figure out how to work around the loss of the terrific jameel warney who currently works for the dallas mavericks and point guard carson puriefoy who now runs the hardwood in the latvian professional league.  we doubt the seawolves have the firepower to compensate for those particular departures and we expect the lions begin the season 1- 0.  the trip east will be quickly followed by a southbound ride on amtrak to the nation’s fifth largest metropolis where  a rematch with phil martelli’s st. joe’s crew looms.  the hawks, 25 game winners last go round and big dancers, edged the lions at levien last autumn in a hard fought, highly entertaining battle.  we were very impressed by their co-leaders on the court, deandre bembry (now working for the atlanta hawks) and isaiah miles.  we also greatly enjoyed the enthusiastic  performance of the st. joe hawk himself whose wings flapped from tip off to final whistle and thoroughly out mascoted our own desultorily dancing rory the lion.  should the constitutionally partisan philadelphia zebras call a fair game, the lions should pay back martelli’s boys for a second win.  the lions continue traveling  to their third contest, a visit to quinnipiac  in connecticut before returning to manhattan at last for their thanksgiving eve home opener against army’s black knights.  following the holiday, we encourage fans to enjoy a turkey sandwich while taking in the saturday, november 26, matinee at levien against another patriot league five, the red raiders from colgate.  these holiday match ups will be played against very comparable squads and should give a fairly accurate idea of the team’s likely performances against ivy foes.  we go out on a limb to forecast that on the last tuesday in november it will be  a 5 – 0 lion squad hosting  joe mihalich’s hofstra crew.  like stony brook and st. joe’s, the pride must replace the two offensive leaders from a very successful (24-10) squad.  though juan’ya green and akeem tansley are gone, mihalich can still run the large and talented messr rokas gustys onto the floor.  last season’s caa first team center, the 6’9″ 260 lb lithuanian might well be the best big man the light blue faces all year.  he will be triggering mihalich’s up tempo attack and columbia has to limit the damage he does on the boards.  we greatly anticipate the contrasting styles of columbia’s motion offense and hofstra running game which will test the light blue’s rebounding prowess and commitment to getting back on defense.

better still, we hope, december opens with the lions traveling to newark’s prudential center for a big venue battle against the seton hall pirates.  the youngsters from south orange got to the ncaa tourney last year and return their entire crew except for isaiah whitehead who chose balling with the brooklyn nets over two more semesters of liberal arts.  even with whitehead’s absence, seton hall enjoys a lofty #12 rpi.  kevin willard, one of the finer branches of the rick pitino coaching tree, skippers the pirates and a select crew of allgamers will enjoy scrutinizing his tactical battle with coach engles.  jumping ahead, allgame anticipates another challenge when as the calendar rushes toward new year’s eve, the boys fly south for a december 28 match up against a big miami team, whose pre-season #9 rating makes them the toughest out on the lions’ non-league schedule.  jim larranaca, like three of the aforementioned coaches, took his boys to the big dance last march, and he too must make do without a crucial contributor as the incandescent angel rodriguez has moved on to the puerto rican professional circuit leaving  miami to discover a new floor leader.  the hurricanes  size alone, though, will present a rigorous test for our boys.  during the smith regime, the lions never backed down against bigger teams as in hard fought defeats at kentucky, michigan state and uconn or as in victories over villanova and ucal irvine (in the final of the c.i.t.).  we hope that this new crew evinces the same courage.  in any event, we trust that the quality of this non-league schedule will temper the lions well for the rigors of ivy play.

finally, who are the players who must work engles’s will.  messrs  lo,rosenberg and mullins took 55% of the light blue’s offense with them at graduation.   that’s  hard to replace but at least coach has some size and last season’s next five scorers returning.  we like those upper classmen as the starting five tonight when the refs toss it up out in stony brook.  juniors kyle castlin (6′ 4″) and nate hickman (6″ 4″) should work the backcourt while luke petrasek (a 6′ 10″ senior) will play down low besides his 6′ 8″ classmate, jeff coby and second year lucas meisner (also listed at 6′ 8″).   petrasek is a complete player who can score down on the blocks as well as  from the three point line.  a slick passing big man he can also put the ball on the floor causing additional headaches, and hopefully foul trouble,  for opponents.  if he hit the backboards with a bit more ferocity he would be an all ivy first teamer.   castlin had a terrific first year when coach smith played him a lot while trying to compensate for the absence of both rosenberg and mullins from the rotation.  last year k. c.  saw his minutes diminish as smith relied on his seniors and he struggled with his offense.  he is explosively athletically driving to the hoop and should he have worked on his jumper in the off season,  he might emerge as the squad’s first option on offense.  meisner played well as a first year and has a three point shot that makes him a legitimate stretch four.  coby is the most physical of the bigs.  he is an opportunistic scorer down low and should be the best rebounder on the team.  finally, nate hickman is a very long 6’4″ and should congest opponents’  passing lanes all season while challenging their bigs with his drives to the rim.  behind this battalion, jimmy e has some other sizable players who will be interchangeable parts in his motion offense.  shane eberle is a 6′ 11″ second year who sat out last year with injury.  patrick tape is a 6′ 10″ north carolinian first year and 6′ 8″  chris mccomber a junior canadian forward who loves the three point line should both contribute as will andrew panayatiou, a 6′ 7″ australian.  the immense conor voss (7′ 1″) should see some time at center if only to eat up defensive space.  john sica (a 6’7″  soph from upstate new york ) was coveted by the smith regime as a terrific shooter.  in the back court, we hope c.j.davis, a second year point guard, is ready to run the show for significant stretches as we love his handle and court vision.  we also hope he has rediscovered his jump shot which disappeared mid-season last year.  mike smith, a 5′ 10″ runner up for illinois high school player of the year, has joined the team.  he supposedly scores from everywhere and we hope provides energy and instant offense.  swingman rodney hunter was sidelined his first season, and is also said to be an offensive talent.  we look forward to discovering who will fulfill various roles – who will be the baseline banger that clears the boards, who will be the dead eye three point shooter to drain the absolutely necessary dagger, who will be the lock down defender who can stymie the enemy’s best player – and those discoveries start tonight.  jump ball on the season  at 7 pm out in stony brook.  nuff said.

peace out and d up,

paulie b