Men's Last Two Chances Lie in Hostile Territory

The Columbia men's basketball team has a mammoth task before it: travel to the two most intimidating arenas in the Ivy League, play the League's two perennial powerhouses, and try to capture a win in order to avoid the first winless league campaign of any Ancient Eight team in a quarter-century.

When Columbia (2-23, 0-12 Ivy) plays Penn tonight, the Quakers (19-5, 11-0) will have a chance to clinch the league title and its NCAA tournament berth before a home crowd at the Palestra. Although Columbia played its best defensive game of the year against the Quakers on Feb. 8 and is coming off of its best offensive game of the year last Saturday against Harvard, the Lions will still have to contend with the best lineup of any conference team.

Then, tomorrow, the Lions will travel to Princeton and face a Tigers team that handily beat them 68-51 on Feb. 7. The Lions have never won at Princeton's Jadwin Gymnasium during the Armond Hill era.
"They're the best teams year in, year out," Hill said. "The Palestra is always tough, and we've never played well at Princeton."

Columbia's crushing 66-63 loss to Harvard last Saturday demonstrated that the Lions can execute in their offensive sets and keep a game close. The questions for this week concern whether the Lions can again execute the same level of proficiency and whether this time they can close the deal with victories against two teams superior to the Crimson.

Penn is led by defending Ivy League Player of the Year Ugonna Onyekwe, who is second in the league among active players, averaging 16.1 points per game. A versatile, big man who can hit jump shots from anywhere on the court, Onyekwe poses matchup problems for any Lion defender. The same can be said of his front-court partner senior Koko Archibong. Equally athletic but less muscular, Archibong is averaging 10.8 points per game.

"Everybody helped defensively [in the first game against Penn]," Hill said. "Onyekwe and Archibong made basketball plays. We did the best we could on stopping their plays, but when the play breaks down, they go into one-on-one and made individual plays. They're tough to guard. I always say that players make plays, and big players make big plays. And they made them."

Archibong, Onykewe, and senior point guard Andrew Toole were all first team all-Ivy selections last season. Penn's offense is further bolstered by emerging sharpshooter Jeff Schiffner (11.7 ppg), who is second on the team in scoring.

The Princeton team that Columbia will face on Saturday is different than the one that stormed Levien in February. The team has been forced to reinvent itself since the loss of junior forward and leading scorer Spencer Gloger to academic ineligibility on Feb. 20. The Tigers have gone 3-1 in the four games since, and much of the slack was picked up by center Judson Wallace and forward Ray Robins, who replaced Gloger in the starting lineup.

With Princeton's deliberate offensive sets, the Tigers may actually pose a more difficult challenge for the Lions' defense, since Columbia will not be able to focus its energy on containing one player. In the first game between the Lions and Tigers, Gloger scored a game-high 19 points.

"[Losing Gloger] has made them execute even better. Now the ball is moving around without stopping as much as it did with Gloger," Hill said. "In reality when I watched their tape, they seemed to be moving the ball around a lot better."

In both games team, defense, making shots when they present themselves, and limiting turnovers will probably determine Columbia's level of success. Hill also points to the need for his players to avoid what he terms "high-degree-of-difficulty shots."

The two games will mark the last contests for senior co-captains Marco McCottry and Chris Wiedemann, the team's top two scorers and rebounders. McCottry is currently second in the league with 7.5 rebounds a game and averages a team high of 8.9 points per game. Wiedemann has steadily improved his play after missing the majority of the non-conference season because of a toe injury and has pushed his averages up to 8 points and 5.9 rebounds a game.

Columbia's practices this week have focused on offensive execution, and Hill has been doing his best to insulate his team from distractions.

"We haven't talked about [those distractions]. We've just practiced," Hill said. "If they give the same effort as they did against Harvard, it gives us a chance to compete."