Men’s Basketball Celebrates Seniors Despite Disapointing Ivy League Losses

By Chad Bonner

Senior Staff Writer

Last weekend, the men’s basketball team finished the 2001-2002 season with two heart-wrenching losses to Penn and Princeton. After generating double-digit leads in the first halves of both games, the Light Blue failed to sustain their intensity after the intermission, and lost to their Ivy League rivals.

The losses encapsulated the disappointment of their season, one in which a team with seven talented seniors on its roster was projected to make a serious run at a conference title. But instead of climbing the standings and getting within reach of an Ivy League trophy, the Lions slipped to sixth place in the Ancient Eight with a 4-10 league record. The Light Blue finished 11-17 overall.

“Things didn’t happen the way we wanted them to,” Head Coach Armond Hill said. “But that’s life.”

Despite how the season turned out, Coach Hill is proud of the legacy that his seven graduating seniors have left for the program.

“They took the program to another level,” Coach Hill said. “With their effort last year [in which the team finished 7-7 in the Ivies], they gave the program some hope. They created a positive atmosphere. They will always be known for playing extremely hard.”

Despite the consistent work ethic, the team’s season was certainly a story of unrealized potential. The Lions had much of campus excited about its chances of stealing the show from perennial favorites Penn and Princeton. The Light Blue won six of its first eight games, which included victories over Lehigh, Lafayette, and Army.

Just before the commencement of the conference season, Columbia played UCLA on the road in famed Pauley Pavilion and fought hard in the second half before succumbing, 64-55. Despite the Light Blue’s loss to the Bruins, the squad inspired some additional confidence in the team’s abilities.

But the beginning of the Ivy season saw the Lions stumble. With senior forward Mike McBrien and senior guard Victor Muñoz spending most of the time on the bench with injuries, Columbia dropped its first pair of Ivy games against Yale and Brown.

Columbia would regain some strength, sweeping Cornell in two matchups against the Big Red within one week of each other, and upsetting Penn on the road to get to 10-10 overall and 3-3 in the Ivies. But just as it looked as if Columbia had found a way to win even without two major senior contributors and first-year Jeremiah Boswell, who sustained a season-ending injury after the Yale-Brown weekend, the Light Blue went into a tailspin that dashed any hopes of competing for an Ivy title.

The Lions lost four straight home games following their dramatic victory over Penn and managed only one win, which came against Dartmouth, in their final eight games.

Perhaps one positive thing to come out of the 2001-2002 campaign is the incredible work ethic and hustle that the veteran players on the team showed and that will now be the inheritance of the returning players. Indeed, a new aggressiveness was already becoming apparent in players, like junior center Chris Weidemann and junior forward Marco McCottry, towards the second half of this season.

“It’s a long process, playing four years of basketball. It’s hard letting go,” senior forward Joe Case said. “But I think all of have us did everything we could [in these last four years], and I hope that rubs off on the younger guys.”