Injuries Hurt Light Blue in Home Stretch

When La Salle transfer Brian Grimes tore his ACL before this basketball season began, coach Joe Jones knew his frontcourt had taken a big hit. Grimes averaged a double-double his senior year of high school and had more rebounds during the 2007-2008 season than any returning Columbia big man but Joe Bova. He was coming to a team that had lost its three starting forwards to graduation—a trio that also happened to be the Light Blue’s three top rebounders.

The ramifications of this injury are being felt now more than ever. After a win at Brown on Feb. 20, Columbia found itself just one game behind Cornell in the Ivy League standings. Since then, recurring injuries to Bova and Asenso Ampim have left Jones with an even thinner frontcourt, and opponents have taken advantage of the Lions’ misfortune.

First Columbia had to face Yale. Even with Ampim playing 35 minutes, the Bulldogs out-rebounded the Lions 32-27 en route to a 57-49 victory on Feb. 21. Then, with both Ampim and Bova out against Harvard and Dartmouth last weekend, the Crimson and Big Green combined to average a double-digit advantage on the glass in two victories.

The Lions now sit 6-6—fifth in the Ivy League—and can hope to finish 8-6 at best, one game better than the previous two seasons. With a weekend split, they would finish 7-7 for the third straight year.

Given the injury to Grimes and the loss of seven players from last year’s team, little was expected from this year’s Columbia squad. Yet for much of the Ivy season, Jones’s team defied its critics and was on pace for a significantly better record than the supposedly more talented Light Blue teams of recent years.

The Lions were successful despite chronic injury woes, a point Jones has reiterated throughout the season. After wins, it has been quite common for Jones to wonder what his team would be capable of if it could ever practice together fully.

While just three regulars have missed significant time, the injuries have hit the Lions were it hurts most. Leading scorer Patrick Foley missed seven games early in the season and has been forced to play limited minutes ever since.

More importantly, with Grimes already on the sidelines, injuries to Bova and Ampim have taken away two of the Light Blue’s steady frontcourt contributors.

The combination of Ampim’s injury with Bova’s absence for much of Ivy play has left Jones with only two big men who have any experience—Jason Miller and Zack Crimmins. While Miller has responded to the pressure with a campaign that could be worthy of all-Ivy honors, he has been forced to learn how to play on the court with four guards at once.

With Ampim’s 35 minutes at Yale marking the only time either he or Bova have set foot on the court during Columbia’s current three-game losing streak, the four-guard lineups have hurt the team on the glass. Columbia’s three opponents have out-rebounded the Lions by 8.5 boards per game with much larger margins after Amprim went down.

Rebounding differential has proven to be a bellwether for the Lions this Ivy season. They have out-rebounded their foes by an average of 1.2 boards in league wins. In losses? They hold a 4.3-rebound disadvantage.

With Miller and Bova graduating, the frontcourt will again be an area of uncertainty next season. Ampim has struggled to stay healthy, and Grimes will be returning from serious surgery. Beyond those two, no one else has earned a starting position.

The backcourt, which features several talented players, will return every regular contributor except for K.J. Matsui. But if this Ivy season was any indication, action inside the paint will prove to be the difference between another .500 season and something special.