Defending coach Wilson: 2009 his best season yet

On Sunday, Princeton head coach Roger Hughes was fired after being at the helm of Tigers football for a decade. This came as a surprise to me, especially considering how the Tigers rallied to win three of their final four games, to finish tied with Columbia for fourth place in the Ancient Eight. When first-team all-Ivy tailback and potential Player of the Year Jordan Culbreath was diagnosed with anemia, the Tigers’ season could have gone down the tubes. Hughes and the Tigers were able to right the ship and finished the season with a respectable league record.

Was Hughes the best coach ever? Surely not. Could he have taken steps to make sure his team had more depth than it did? Probably. Did he deserve to be fired? I don’t think so. I guess after 10 years, Princeton just wanted something new. We’ll see how that goes.

Here in Morningside Heights, some people—more than a few of them Spec columnists—thought that Columbia head coach Norries Wilson’s job was at stake going into the final two weeks of the season. While I’m sure that the Lions’ wins over Cornell and Brown changed their minds, they only affirmed what I thought all along—the 2009 edition of the Lions is the best team that Wilson has had in his four years.

Sure, the Light Blue of 2006 had one more win than this year’s squad, but it also had a cupcake out-of-conference schedule. Fordham had an off-year going 3-8, Georgetown was as poor a team as it usually is, and Columbia was the best team that Iona played all year. Those three wins, plus a victory over a Cornell team that couldn’t win away from home, and a nail-biter on the road against a Brown team that also finished 2-5 in the league, gave the Lions their best season in a decade. All in all, the Light Blue didn’t beat an opponent with a .500 record or above that season.

The past two years were a buildup to this season, and we all knew it coming in. This was the year where the Lions were deep with talent at just about every position, and the rest of the Ivy League—outside of Penn and Harvard—had a lot of question marks surrounding it entering the season. Suddenly, Columbia didn’t just have a chance to stick around in every game—it had a legitimate chance to win. The team and its fans had a newfound excitement entering the ’09 campaign, which has to be seen as a credit to the coaching staff. It’s not an easy task to generate hope in people who have been surrounded by defeat for so long, but at the beginning of the season there was definitely hope in Morningside.

Maybe that’s why some people turned on Wilson in the middle of the season. His team had given them hope and they had been let down. I can’t remember the last time Columbia football fans had been let down, but it certainly wasn’t during my time here. What these people weren’t seeing—possibly because they still weren’t going to games—was a team that was drastically better and competing on a much higher level.

Of the Lions’ six losses this year, there were only two in which the result shocked or upset me. After coming out strong and taking a 21-10 lead into the half against Lafayette—a team that beat both Penn and Harvard this season—it seemed as though the Light Blue stopped competing. Whether it was poor play calling, lack of effort, or some great adjustments by Lafayette, it was inexcusable. As I left the press box that night I couldn’t help but think that there was no reason Columbia should have lost—it was the better team that night. In fact, Lafayette head coach Frank Tavani said the Lions were the best Ivy League team the Leopards faced, which is saying something.

The Lions’ loss to Dartmouth was the other game that was a bit of a shocker for me. Buddy Teevens’ squad was on a 17-game losing streak, and though they had played a strong schedule, I expected Columbia could get its second Ivy win of the season. Unfortunately for the Lions, the players also thought like me and really didn’t take the Big Green seriously—Austin Knowlin said as much after the game. Part of the blame for that falls on the coaches for not getting the team ready to play, and on the players too for not taking an opponent seriously.

Columbia’s losses to Central Connecticut State (a school in a solid conference that offers scholarships), Penn, and Harvard showed that the Lions could keep up with the Joneses for half of the game, but weren’t at their level yet. I wasn’t very surprised by these three losses—wins would have been great upsets, but defeats weren’t major setbacks.

The game against Yale is a whole different story. If I told you that, going in, the Light Blue would be without Ray Rangel and a freshman would be under center, absolutely no one would put money down on the Lions having a 22-10 lead in the fourth quarter—not even if I gave 1,000-to-one odds. That game, though it ended up being a loss in what one of the Yale players called the weirdest game he had ever played, showed the Lions’ depth and ability to rally despite losing two of its biggest offensive threats.

Speaking of depth, the Lions are looking pretty solid for 2010 if I may be so bold as to look ahead. Their defense will lose just four starters—Lou Miller, Matt Bashaw, Andy Shalbrack, and Corey Cameron—and should get back Owen Fraser and Alex Gross, who went down due to injury. The offense will see a lot of changes, but there are some star players returning. Quarterback Sean Brackett has proven that he can win at this level, receiver Mike Stephens is above-average, tight-end Andrew Kennedy has established himself as a legitimate threat, and left tackle Jeff Adams was nothing short of stellar this season in his first campaign as a starter.

Though the Light Blue didn’t achieve what it and its fans expected to this season, the program seems to be on its way up. Three Ivy wins—the Lions’ most since 2003—is nothing to scoff at, especially considering that one of them came against one of the top three teams in the league. Anyone still calling for a regime change? Didn’t think so.

Matt Velazquez is a Columbia College senior majoring in history.
sports@colubiaspectator.com