No one does inconsistency better than Columbia. Joe Jones and the Lions proved that once again on Saturday in one of the most frustrating losses of Jones’s tenure as head coach. The Lions allowed Cornell to shoot a stunning 65 percent from the floor in the second half and turn what had been a five-point Columbia advantage into a double-digit deficit in frighteningly short time. It was an inauspicious start for Jones’s overhauled roster, but perhaps one that should have been expected.
Growing pains are pretty much inevitable for this year’s Columbia squad. Four-fifths of last year’s starting rotation is gone, including all-Ivy forward John Baumann, and Jones has only four seniors on the team, all of whom have come off of the bench in their three previous years. Saturday’s starting center, Jason Miller, had never started an Ivy League game prior to last weekend, and neither had Noruwa Agho or Kevin Bulger, both of whom were in the starting five and logged heavy minutes. Even players like Zack Crimmins, who rarely moved off the end of the bench in his first year with the Lions, are seeing increased playing time. It’s a true baptism by fire for the majority of the team, and unfortunately, that lack of experience and depth is going to lead to outcomes like Saturday’s more often than not.
Of course, odds are good that Columbia won’t play defense that poor again at any point this season. But it wasn’t just the defensive collapse that led to Columbia’s loss. Cornell made all the adjustments it needed to make to win, while Columbia seemed entirely unable to adapt to those changes. Jones’ defensive plan for stopping the Big Red was excellent at the start, denying the Big Red open looks from outside, but once Cornell found a way to break down the defense by speeding up the tempo, the Lions quickly fell apart. It happened on the offensive end as well—while Louis Dale efficiently penetrated and found Ryan Wittman open outside, most Columbia possessions featured fruitless drives straight into defenders or contested shots from the perimeter.
Against Cornell, there isn’t room for mistakes. The Big Red are a good bet to pull off a second straight undefeated season, and when their offense clicks like it did in the second half, most teams don’t stand a chance. But that didn’t happen for Cornell overnight—as with every team, there was a learning period and a transition period where Cornell’s young players like Dale and Wittman took their lumps and learned how to play Ivy basketball. And it can happen with Jones’s new class of recruits—there’s certainly an abundance in talent on this roster, starting with Patrick Foley and Niko Scott and going through a freshman class that could see substantial time this year. But the same was said of Jones’s last recruiting class, which came together to provide Columbia with more wins over four years than any recruiting class in the program’s history but ultimately failed to crack the top half of the Ivy League. It hasn’t helped that Jones has had to contend first with a dominant Penn team that featured Ibby Jaaber, perhaps the best Ivy basketball player in the last 20 years, and then with a Cornell team that, when it’s all said and done, will probably field three first-team all-Ivy players in Dale, Wittman, and Jeff Foote.
Saturday’s game wasn’t just a tale of two halves, it was a tale of two programs. On the one hand, you had a Cornell team that has built itself into the best team in the Ivy League, one that has depth at every position and star caliber talent in the starting lineup. And on the other, a Columbia team that can never quite seem to get over the hump, coming apart at the worst possible times and coming up short at crucial spots, loaded with raw talent but unable to turn that potential into winning results. And while Cornell’s players walked off of the court to a standing ovation from the Big Red fan section, Columbia’s players went to the locker room after another in a long line of defeats snatched from the jaws of victory, wondering what could have been.
Jonathan Tayler is a Columbia College senior majoring in history. sports@columbiaspectator.com
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