Fans Prove Columbia's Got Passion

Yale’s Travis Pinick doesn’t seem like the type to buckle under pressure. A second-team All-Ivy selection last year as a junior, one of the conference’s best rebounders and a league MVP back in high school, it stands to reason that Pinick has faced his fair share of big situations and tough spots.

Hostile crowds? Maybe not so much as an Ivy League player. So you can probably forgive poor Travis if, after the torrent of abuse heaped on him after airballing a free throw, he didn’t feel a little overcome by all the attention.

Travis wasn’t alone. Heckled, harassed, and harried by a Columbia crowd that came alive for the first time in three years, Yale’s players wilted under the pressure in their come-from-behind loss. Folded, fell apart, came up small, disappeared, collapsed—pick a synonym, any synonym, and you’ll get a pretty good idea of the Bulldogs’ second-half performance. A Yalie hasn’t choked like that since our former president elected for Snyder’s of Hanover over Lays.

Credit Columbia’s suffocating defense all you want; obviously, the increase in the intensity level in the second half was the on-the-court key to the Lions’ first Ivy win of the year. But for once, Columbia got a boost from a crowd that, at least in the last four years, hasn’t had much reason to get behind the product on the court. It has really only happened a few times before, most notably back in 2006, when Columbia shocked the blueblood world by knocking off Penn and Princeton on back-to-back nights. Friday’s victory over Yale doesn’t quite reach that level of upset—as nice as it is to rub it in Yale’s face, there’s a sizeable gulf of talent between this year’s Bulldogs team and the Penn team that shook off its embarrassing New York City trip to win the Ivy championship.

It doesn’t matter, however, the level of upset or the degree of win. What stands out is the passion—the real, actual energy—that Columbia fans brought to this game. To be fair, things started out slowly. The fan section was noticeably empty at tip-off, and students were still filing in at halftime. And the level of play in the first half wasn’t exactly inspiring; Columbia had more turnovers than field goals made in the first 15 minutes, while every other Yale trip down the floor ended in a travel or offensive foul. But whatever Joe Jones said to his team in the locker room apparently worked—the Lions came out of the break with a newfound vigor, and the crowd responded in kind.

It’s hard to pick a favorite moment from Friday’s game. Certainly, every time Asenso Ampim raced down the court with his hand in the air, looking for an outlet pass, the fans took notice. There’s an audible hush that comes over a crowd right before a dunk, building into a slow roar that erupts into hysteria once hand and ball meet rim. But the first time Columbia picked off a Yale pass, and Kevin Bulger got the ball out to Ampim, and the big sophomore took his gigantic steps down the court and then lifted off, finishing with an authoritative one-hand slam (left-handed, no less)... let’s just say things got a little crazy for a bit.

For all the heartbreak that week one’s game against Cornell provided, with a five-point halftime lead evaporating before you could say, “Louis Dale and Ryan Wittman,” Friday’s game gave the fans the best half of Columbia basketball since the Penn upset. Everything was clicking: the defense clamped down, Jason Miller was a force inside, Patrick Foley and sensational rookie Noruwa Agho drove into the lane at will and made acrobatic shot after acrobatic shot. Even the sore moments—like a stretch in the second half during which Zack Crimmins, still finding his feet as an Ivy League player, turned in three fouls, a missed layup, and a turnover in a scant three minutes—didn’t last for long: the crowd simply wouldn’t let them.

Travis Pinick heard it all night long. Stepping up to the line for two foul shots at the start of the second half, he had the Columbia fans on his back the whole time. And when his first free-throw attempt didn’t even graze the front of the rim—barely even hit the net on its way down—the crowd erupted, and Pinick turned away a little, trying to get his back to the fans, with a look of total confusion on his face at the wave of sound going in his direction. His second attempt clanged off of the back of the rim; for the rest of the game, any and all of his touches prompted a serenade of “AIRBALL” from the student section. It simply wasn’t Travis Pinick’s night­—for once, it was Columbia’s.

Jonathan Tayler is a Columbia College senior majoring in history.
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