As the tip-off of the 2011-12 season approaches, both Columbia Lions basketball programs face stiff competition within the Ivy League. A year after both teams finished in the middle of the pack, the Light Blue will have to face a talented Harvard team that is the clear favorite in the men’s field and a Princeton women’s team that has run away with the league title the past two years.
Although the Harvard men lost a one-game playoff to Princeton after the two teams finished tied with a 12-2 Ivy record at the end of last season, this year Harvard holds many advantages. The Crimson return most of its key players from their 2010-11 roster, including senior forward Keith Wright, last year’s Ivy League Player of the Year. Harvard’s men’s basketball head coach Tommy Amaker has also done an excellent job of using his high-profile status to get star players to come to Cambridge and 2011 is no exception, as the Crimson landed two three-star recruits.
“They’re a good program,” Columbia men’s basketball head coach Kyle Smith said. “They’re very well coached.”
Harvard’s team has few holes, excelling in virtually every aspect of the game.
“They play very sound defensively, they rebound the ball, they take good shots, they don’t turn it over,” Smith said. “They can play fast, they can play slow. To me, that’s the sign of a good team. They play intelligently and they’re talented.”
Harvard’s up-and-coming program has played an instrumental role in altering the men’s basketball power dynamic within the conference, challenging Penn and Princeton’s longtime dominance.
Smith sees opportunity in the shifting Ivy landscape.
“I think a rising tide brings all ships in,” Smith said. “Everyone’s like, “Hey, you know what, we can do it.””
The Lions will certainly need to play their best to beat Harvard, especially in Cambridge, where the Crimson went undefeated last year.
While Princeton’s women’s team has a lot in common with the Harvard men, unlike the Crimson, it has always been among the league’s best teams, winning at least one championship in every decade since the program’s inception. The Tigers are currently in the midst of one of their most successful stretches, having gone 27-1 within the Ivy League in the last two years. They are especially difficult to beat at home, having gone 14-0 in the last two years.
“Princeton makes it difficult, they are a great team, but it is also due to the unusual venue,” Columbia women’s basketball head coach Paul Nixon said of the Tigers’ success at home. Princeton’s arena is dome-shaped, something that Nixon said “creates for a unique shooting background.”
Nixon spoke of the difference between playing Princeton at home and away.
“In our games in my six years against Princeton, the games have been much higher scoring at Columbia and at Princeton it’s more of a defensive struggle,” Nixon said.
He also pointed out that last year’s Tiger squad was very much capable of winning on the road.
“They’re 14-0 at home, 13-1 on the road, so it’s not like when they go away from home they’re terrible,” Nixon said.
The Princeton roster is stacked from top to bottom, and it features two of the conference’s best players in senior center Devona Allgood and senior guard Lauren Edwards. Both were first team all-Ivy last year, with Allgood selected unanimously. The Tigers will also look for a big contribution from 2009-10 Ivy League Rookie of the Year and first team all-Ivy junior forward Niveen Rasheed, who is coming off an injury-shortened 2010-11 campaign.
In addition to boasting formidable star power, the Tiger roster is also very deep.
“They don’t have any one player we can focus on,” Nixon said. “You need to guard all five players that they have on the court all the time.”
Well-balanced and extremely talented, Princeton is tough to beat. The Lions have tried a number of strategies, but nothing has proved effective.
“We tried focusing just on post game, we tried focusing on trying to shut down their perimeter scoring,” Nixon said. “Nothing has worked in the last three years.”
The Light Blue held their own early in the game when they hosted the Tigers last season before ultimately losing. Columbia will try to build on this modest start and will look to play spoiler when they travel to Princeton to face the Tigers in their Ivy opener on Jan. 15. The men will first face off against Harvard in Cambridge, Mass. on Feb. 4.
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