After many variations, Lions' starting lineup finds stability

In the Columbia women’s basketball team’s first two games this season, its starting lineup consisted entirely of returning players. Sophomore guard Taylor Ball, sophomore forward Tyler Simpson, junior guard Melissa Shafer, senior guard Kathleen Barry, and senior center Lauren Dwyer comprised the starting five. Even that lineup, however, radically differed from the one that the Lions used one year earlier.

Columbia’s starting lineup in the 2009-10 season, the season in which the Lions went 18-10 overall and 9-5 in the Ivy League, included Barry and Dwyer. It also included guard Sara Yee, guard Danielle Browne, and forward Judie Lomax, all of whom graduated this past spring. Columbia entered the 2010-11 season, therefore, with major holes to fill.

Forming a new starting lineup was no easy task for head coach Paul Nixon and his staff. They experimented with five different starting lineups in Columbia’s first nine games.

“I never anticipated that we would have to go through this many changes,” Nixon said.

The sixth starting lineup, which the Lions first used at Hawaii on Dec. 28, is the one that has stuck. That lineup—consisting of Barry, Dwyer, freshman guard Taylor Ward, freshman guard Brianna Orlich, and freshman forward Courtney Bradford—has now started six of Columbia’s past seven games. The lineup changed only against Lafayette on Jan. 5, when Barry did not play due to injury. Shafer took her place.

Dwyer has started all of Columbia’s games this year, while Barry has started all but the one against Lafayette. Orlich has started since the Lions’ third contest, and Ward has started since their fifth game. That means that four-fifths of Columbia’s current starting lineup was decided by the team’s fifth contest.

The final piece of the Lions’ first string took more time to determine. Sophomore guard Diana Lee started in Columbia’s fifth game, while Simpson held the final starting spot in the Lions’ sixth and seventh matchups. Shafer returned to the starting lineup for Columbia’s eighth and ninth games before being replaced by Bradford in the 10th game, the one against Hawaii.

Bradford was actually an experiment, too. She had started in the Lions’ third and fourth games—against St. John’s and Manhattan, respectively—when Nixon wanted to use a bigger lineup.

Against Hawaii, UNLV, and Cal State-Bakersfield—the three teams that Columbia faced in Hawaii in late December—Bradford once again started due to her size. There was no guarantee that she would remain a starter after those games.

But Bradford proved her value as a starter. Against Cal State-Bakersfield, she scored 10 points and grabbed a Lomax-like 14 rebounds to record her first double-double. Since then, she has continued to be a solid post presence. Though Bradford did not play in the second half at Cornell on Saturday due to illness, she likely will start this coming weekend.

Not only does Columbia now have a stable starting lineup, but the players who take the court—both starters and substitutes—are now comfortable playing together. That was not always the case.

“As our record indicates, we really struggled early in the season to try and find that on-court chemistry and having players be used to playing with each other,” Nixon said.

The Lions began the year with 13 straight defeats. Nixon cited Columbia’s seventh and eighth games—against Monmouth and Fairfield, respectively—as ones in which the team “started playing close to our capabilities.” The Lions suffered a 67-64 loss at Monmouth and a 50-46 loss against Fairfield.

After those contests, Columbia played four games against incredibly tough opponents. The Lions faced Iowa State on the road before their three in Hawaii. Then, one game after its one-point loss to Lafayette, Columbia earned its first win—a 61-54 victory over Cornell on Jan. 15. The Lions followed that performance with a 75-65 win against St. Francis (N.Y.). Though Columbia did not win its second game against Cornell—the Big Red came away with a 53-50 victory—the Lions certainly are not looking the way they did at the start of the season.

“Since we’ve come back from Hawaii, the team has, even with some key players missing—Kathleen missing for the Lafayette game and, obviously, Courtney missing the second half of the [second] Cornell game—I think we’ve still been able to play at a very competitive level,” Nixon said.