The women’s basketball team may have a clean slate heading into the 2009-2010 season, but returnees from last year’s squad may be forgiven for thinking the team is already on a four-game losing streak. After staking itself to strong late-season league record of 6-4, last year’s Lions closed out the year with four straight losses to Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton, and Penn. They finished 6-8 in Ivy League play.
“We could’ve just as easily ended the season on a four-game winning streak as opposed to a four-game losing streak,” head coach Paul Nixon said. “It was four games by one possession or two possessions.”
The Lions will hit the court running this week to open the season with three games in under a week starting with tonight’s home matchup against Sacred Heart. By the time Thanksgiving comes, they’ll have played four games against local teams and Nixon’s staff will have an idea of where they stand.
A Thanksgiving weekend tournament in Reno, Nev. against Nevada and Iowa or West Virginia will then be followed by a series of East Coast nonconference matches until mid-January, when the Ivy season opens with a home-and-home series against Cornell.
A major test comes the weekend of Feb. 26 when the Lions take on Ivy heavyweights Harvard and Dartmouth on the road. The final weekend of the year, when Columbia hosts Yale and Brown, promises to provide plenty of late-season drama.
In the recently-released Ivy League Preseason Media Poll, the Columbia women’s basketball team was predicted to finish fourth, behind Dartmouth, Harvard, and Princeton. But from day one, Nixon’s squad will be gunning for the top of the league, especially since the program has staked a lot on the success of the coming season. There may be six freshmen on the official roster, but make no mistake—this team belongs to its upperclassmen.
“This is the first season where we really have what I would consider a veteran-laden team with experience,” Nixon said. “The first-years are going to have the luxury of really stepping up as the opportunities come.”
Although some newer faces will see plenty of playing time down the stretch, they will not be so prevalent in Nixon’s starting lineup. Four of last year’s key starters will be returning to the court, led by senior captain Sara Yee, Columbia’s point guard and reigning Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year. Yee, who started all 28 games last season, racked up 37 steals while averaging 2.6 assists per game and turning the ball over just 1.5 times per game.
Senior guard Danielle Browne, junior forward Judie Lomax, and junior center Lauren Dwyer will also be starting for coach Nixon, while junior Kathleen Barry, who had a lot of minutes last year, is expected to fill the fifth starting spot.
“Barry has other starts but those were when Browne was out with injury and she [Barry] kind of plugged into her starting role,” Nixon said. “So I’m looking at it like we have five returning starters … Kathleen Barry is perfectly capable of being a starter at this level.”
The Lions have an inherent advantage over many Ivy teams because their established players are already comfortable playing with one another. But will they be able to successfully integrate new faces? Will they be able to start winning close games with some measure of consistency? The Lions will begin answering these questions on the floor tonight at 7 p.m. against Sacred Heart in Levien Gymnasium.
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