Last minutes of games may prove decisive for Lions

The good: After going 0-12 through November and December, the Columbia women’s basketball team went 3-3 in January. The bad: The Lions went 3-3 when they had the chance to go 6-0.
Don’t believe that? Check the final scores of Columbia’s January games. In addition to earning three wins, the Lions suffered two one-point losses and one three-point loss.

Against Lafayette on Jan. 5, Columbia took a 61-60 lead with 58 seconds left and a 63-60 lead with 16 seconds remaining. But Lafayette scored with 10 seconds left to make the score 63-62, and the Lions turned the ball over on their ensuing inbounds play. That turnover led to a Lafayette layup with 3.5 seconds remaining.

Columbia then inbounded the ball successfully and got it past midcourt before calling a timeout with 0.8 seconds left. After a deflection by Lafayette, Columbia kept the ball, this time with 0.2 seconds on the clock. Senior center Lauren Dwyer was unable to score at the buzzer, however, and Columbia endured a heartbreaking 64-63 loss.

The Lions found themselves in another close game on Jan. 22, when they trailed Cornell by one point with 1:12 left. Columbia had two chances to take a 52-51 lead in the final minute, but the Lions could not finish their shots. Freshman guard Brianna Orlich was called for a travel when attempting a layup with 44 seconds left, and senior guard Kathleen Barry barely missed a jumper with 1.5 seconds left. Cornell hit two free throws in the final second and earned a 53-50 victory.

Against Harvard on Jan. 28, Columbia held a 66-63 advantage with 1:23 remaining. After the Crimson took a 67-66 lead, Columbia responded by going ahead 68-67 lead when freshman guard Taylor Ward hit a layup with 13 seconds left. But, like they did against Lafayette, the Lions failed to hold onto their lead in the final seconds of the game. Harvard scored with 3.5 seconds left, and a last-second jumper from Barry did not fall for Columbia.

“I thought the team definitely played hard enough to win, I thought we worked all week in practice to get a really solid game plan that would put us in good position to come out with a win tonight, and I thought we played hard enough for 39 minutes and 55 seconds to get that done,” head coach Paul Nixon said after the game.

The Lions nearly suffered a loss against Dartmouth the following night. After leading by 13 points in the second half, Columbia let Dartmouth get within three points on two occasions in the final minute. The Lions benefited from clutch free throws by sophomore forward Tyler Simpson, junior guard Melissa Shafer, and Ward down the stretch. When the game ended, Columbia had achieved a 67-61 win.

“I’m just, obviously, extremely pleased to come away with a victory,” Nixon said in a postgame interview. “We’ve had situations before … where we’ve let a team kind of come back at the end on us like that and actually pull ahead and take the game. So I was very pleased to see us step up, handle the pressure at the end.”

The Lions also handled Cornell on Jan. 15 and St. Francis (N.Y.) on Jan. 19, withstanding second-half rallies by both opponents. Columbia earned a 61-54 win over Cornell and a 75-65 win over St. Francis.

Based on the Lions’ experiences in January, predicting how they will fare in the rest of Ivy League play is close to impossible. The outcome of each of Columbia’s last 10 Ivy games could easily remain uncertain until the final buzzer sounds.