Running Out of Time

Still in the process of licking their wounds from a rough four-game road trip, the Columbia Lions (12-11, 3-7 Ivy) return to Levien Gymnasium trying to regain momentum against traditional Ivy powers Penn and Princeton.

After much pre-season hype, Friday’s opponent, the Princeton Tigers (12-11, 3-6) represent the underachievers of the two, but seem to have regained a bit of confidence after an impressive win at Brown last weekend. The Tigers are now the only team to faithfully stick with the once-vogue Princeton offense, meaning the game will flow much slower than head coach Joe Jones’ preferred pace.

“We played them in the past, and last year I thought we were very close, until they were able to extend their lead in the second half,” Jones said. “We’ve been able to play with them for the most part. We need to score the ball – I think if we score on the offensive end, we’ll be fine. They play a little bit quicker than they played in the past, so you can’t take them for granted just because we’ve defended them well in the past.”

The Tigers are led by seniors Judson Wallace, a 6’9” center, and slashing guard Will Venable, both of whom average scoring into the double digits this season. While the Lions were able to contain Wallace for the most part, the presence of Venable and backcourt mate Scott Greenman hurt the Lions from the outside in their previous meeting, a 63-53 Princeton win.

“They’ve got a couple of guys that can really fill it up. We have to play hard defense on the ball; in terms of position-work, we need to not let them run their offense smoothly,” Jones said. “We need to be in position to help each other out, and we’ve been doing that in the first half of games. In the second half, we need to do a better job.”

The Penn Quakers (15-8, 8-1) are riding high above what has otherwise been a very open year in the Ivy League, with a comfortable margin for the Ivy League’s automatic NCAA Tournament berth, despite losing to Yale in their last game. The Quakers are led by guards Tim Begley (14.0 ppg) and Ibrahim Jaaber (11.0 ppg), but the Lions will also be on the lookout for sophomore Steve Danley, who caused the Lions a great deal of trouble in their earlier 73-66 loss, going to the line for 17 of the Quakers’ 47 free-throw attempts that night.

“I haven’t thought much about that game, but if I have to think about it—[the fouls] are something that concerns me,” Jones said. “Danley really hurt us, and Judson Wallace can really hurt us. We need to do a better job of guarding guys inside, and we’ll be okay.”

The Light Blue has been a more melancholy color over the past few weeks, as Columbia has lost traction in their bid to finish in the Ivy League’s upper reaches with a number of close losses, ending with a two-point heartbreaker at Dartmouth last weekend.

“We’re trying to get back to basics,” Jones said of. “What we try to do is continue to work on what we need to work on, because we’re not far away. Sometimes when you’re losing, you second guess what you’re doing, and you just have to stay the course.” He explained, “Out of the six games that we played, we had two tough losses in that span, and if we’d won those two games, we’d feel a lot better. We’ve had leads in the second half of games, and we just need to keep doing what we’ve been doing.”

While the Lions have struggled toward the end of games during their dry spell, Jones is not concerned about a similar situation in this weekend’s games.

“We’ve won a lot of close games—we haven’t done it lately, but we’re definitely capable of winning the close games,” Jones said. “Both games will probably end up being very close, and I’m confident we’ll make the plays to do it. We haven’t been making big plays on the defensive end—to defend late in games, that’s been the key [for the recent game].”