Shafer set to make her mark in starting five

Last season, Melissa Shafer led the Ivy League in three-point shooting percentage and was the Columbia women’s basketball team’s fourth-highest scorer. The best part? She did it all as a reserve.
If Shafer managed to have that much success as a bench player, the chances of her making valuable contributions as a starter are high. This year, the junior guard will have the opportunity to prove that logic.

With the Lions having lost three of last season’s starters, Shafer has moved into the first string. While she made three starts last season, she served only as a replacement for injured players. This year will be the first in which Shafer is a regular member of the starting lineup. As a shooting guard, she will take the spot previously held by Danielle Browne.

Shafer averaged 14.6 minutes per game as a freshman and 17.1 minutes as a sophomore. This season, her playing time could increase significantly, and she seems to be ready for her new role.
“She’s gone from being a really solid contributor her freshman year to a key component in our success last year,” head coach Paul Nixon said. “I mean, there were several games where she just really helped to decide the game with her outside shooting.”

Nixon cited Columbia’s 64-63 win at Robert Morris last year as one such contest. Shafer scored 14 points—11 of them in the second half—to help the Lions overcome an eight-point halftime deficit.
Against Dartmouth on Feb. 19, Shafer contributed a career-high 15 points. She hit five of 10 field goals, three of which were treys. The Lions beat the Big Green by seven points in overtime.

Shafer hit four three-pointers in the team’s win over Robert Morris, and another four in its 68-47 triumph over Cornell. In Columbia’s 80-61 win at Penn, she hit all three of her three-point attempts.
In all, she scored in the double digits in 11 matchups last season. Nine of those games were Ivy contests.

Scoring is nothing new for Shafer, who totaled 1,616 points in her high school career. But her steadiness as a three-point shooter has improved over the years.

“I was definitely working on it throughout high school,” she said. “But I think I’ve gotten a lot more consistent as I’ve gotten more shots up in my life.”

As a freshman at Columbia, Shafer hit 26 of 81 treys for a three-point shooting percentage of .321. Last year, she made 51 of 115 three-pointers to achieve a league-high percentage of .443.
Only Brittney Carfora, who led the nation with a three-point shooting percentage of .519 in the 2006-2007 season, has had a higher such percentage for the Lions.

“That’s an area that we knew, when we recruited her, that that was something that she could do,” Nixon said of Shafer’s outside shooting.

Shafer’s field-goal percentage, which includes two-point and three-point shots, climbed from .344 in her first season to .410 in her second. But she has also developed her skills on the other side of the ball.

“I think the thing that I’ve been most pleased with is her improvement on defense,” Nixon said. “She really takes pride in it now.”

Senior co-captain Kathleen Barry also praised Shafer’s varied abilities.

“Everyone talks about Melissa’s shooting, which, of course, is awesome,” Barry said. “But she’s also just, ever since her freshman year, been working on every part of her game. She’s a great defender; she’s great getting to the basket when she needs to. So even though her shooting’s definitely what everyone knows her for, she’s definitely a complete player.”

In addition to working on her own defense, Shafer is preparing for the defenses that she will face this year. She recognizes that Columbia’s opponents are not likely to overlook such a dangerous scorer.

“That’s definitely why I’m working on the pull-ups,” Shafer said. “I expect a lot more taking away the immediate shot, so [I’ll need to make] secondary, off-the-dribble pull-ups.”

Shafer brings consistency and experience to a starting lineup that, at least in the Lions’ season opener, will include two largely untested sophomores. With her steady shooting and improved defense, she is primed to make the most of her minutes.