A 38-point second half against Dartmouth gave men’s basketball its first conference win of the season and snapped its five-game losing streak. Before defeating the Big Green Saturday, though, the Lions (7-11, 1-3 Ivy) were dominated by Harvard on Friday night, falling 74-45.
Not only did the Light Blue lose the game, but it also lost a key starter to injury, when senior point guard Pat Foley went down with a shoulder injury at the end of the first half. Foley’s shoulder isn’t the only health issue facing Columbia, as junior forward Asenso Ampim didn’t play in either game this weekend due to injury.
While head coach Joe Jones is hopefully that Ampim will return to the court next weekend, Foley’s status for the rest of the season is uncertain.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Jones said after Saturday’s win over Dartmouth. “I don’t know if he’s going to make it back.”
Foley, who has battled injuries throughout his collegiate career, had surgery two summers ago on the same shoulder that he hurt in Friday’s game.
“I just feel awful for that kid,” Jones said. “He’s been hurt his whole career and he’s a heck of a player.”
“He’s been our best guard since he’s been here, since he’s stepped on campus,” Jones continued. “He just really hasn’t had a chance to prove it over time. It’s a shame that he’s been hurt.”
Before getting injured, Foley was on fire, posting 10 points on 4-of-6 shooting in just 13 minutes of play. In fact, he combined with sophomore guard Noruwa Agho for 22 of the Lions’ 26 first-half points.
Even with Foley playing most of the first half, the Light Blue struggled to keep up with the Crimson (14-4, 3-1 Ivy). Harvard’s leading scorer, senior guard Jeremy Lin, opened the game with a layup, giving his team a 2-0 lead that the Crimson would never relinquish. Two more Crimson layups gave Harvard a 6-0 advantage before Agho hit a two-point jumper with just over 18 minutes left to play in the first half.
Throughout the half, Harvard slowly built its lead by hitting five of 10 3-pointers and shooting 56.5 percent from the field. Heading into halftime, the Crimson led 41-26, due in large part to Lin’s 13 first-half points on 5-for-6 shooting.
Things only got worse for the Lions in the second half. After shooting 42.1 percent from the field before intermission, Columbia made only five of its 20 field goals after the half.
“I thought tonight we did a good job of executing our plays, we just couldn’t make enough baskets …” Jones said after the game. “I thought we executed some stuff pretty well, and got some pretty good looks, and didn’t dock them down.”
Though the Light Blue were able to cut the Crimson lead down to 13 with 15:16 left to play, it was never able to make a full comeback. Harvard’s strong offensive play continued in the second half, finishing the game with 55.6 percent shooting.
Lin, who played only 10 minutes in the second half, scored a game-high 14 points, while Agho led the Lions with 12, all of which came in the first half.
After the game, Agho discussed the team’s poor shooting in the second half and the relationship between offense and defense.
“I think people forget that offense and defense, they’re two different things, but they kind of coincide,” Agho said. “When you’re struggling on defense, your offense isn’t going to flourish.”
With the loss to Harvard following back-to-back losses to Cornell, Columbia was off to an 0-3 start in league play. While slow starts are not unfamiliar to the Lions, the fact that they were defeated by an average margin of 25.3 points could have been seen as a cause for concern. However, Agho saw this as a positive thing.
“The fact that we’re getting blown out is going to hopefully really bring us together, and understand that we need to change,” Agho said.
“I think because we’re losing by so much, hopefully this can be a wake-up call,” he continued.
And it was. The Lions came out swinging against the Big Green the next night, opening the game with a 17-6 run. A crucial part of that run was senior guard Niko Scott, who had two 3-pointers, in the first five minutes of play.
“I was proud of the way Niko came out tonight—I know he got in foul trouble—but I was proud that he took it as a challenge and he was ready to go,” Jones said of Niko after the game.
Though Dartmouth (4-14, 0-4 Ivy) would go on a 12-0 run to close the gap and end the half with a tie score, Columbia exploded with 38 points in the second half to win the game 63-51.
Agho again led the squad in scoring with 25 points, and also grabbed a team-high nine boards. Scott finished the game with 12 points on 4-of-6 3-point shooting. Agho was also 4-of-6 from behind the arc.
As a team, the Light Blue shot 61.5 percent from 3-point land, compared to just 9.1 percent the night before.
“I feel like we have some good shooters,” Scott said after the Dartmouth game. “I think that’s evident. The thing I feel like we sometimes lack is that little bit of focus, to see the guy that’s wide open, or set the screen to get the guy open … so that was really something that we were cognizant about coming into the game.”
Overall, the Lions had a much better game against the Big Green than they did against the Crimson. Columbia shot 48.6 percent from the floor, while holding Dartmouth to just 36.5 percent. The Lions also out-rebounded their opponents 34-25.
“We probably hit all our game goals,” Jones said. “We haven’t done that since Barack got elected.”
Now that Columbia has won a league game, Agho hopes the team’s strong play can continue.
“We have something to build upon and we did a lot of good things tonight,” Agho said. “We kind of got the monkey off our back, and I think now we can play a lot looser and try to get things done more efficiently.”
Next up for the Lions is a matchup against Brown on Friday.
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