Light Blue Gives Up Two Wins and Chance at Ivy Championship

The Columbia women’s basketball team, competing at Harvard and Dartmouth, lost both games of its toughest league road trip to fall back to .500 in Ivy play.

Coming into the weekend, the Lions knew they needed a sweep of the two Ivy powers to even enter the conversation for the Ivy championship. Head coach Paul Nixon remarked that this was the first time in his tenure that the Lions were in contention at this late stage of the season.

Sitting at 6-4—behind Cornell, Harvard and Dartmouth—Columbia could have moved into a three-way tie for first with victories both games, and Cornell losses to Dartmouth and Harvard.

Much like the last time they played Harvard and Dartmouth, the Lions showed both their ability to play with the best and the signs of a team that is not there yet.
Saturday’s game against Dartmouth was one head coach Paul Nixon would like to forget.

Dartmouth opened the game with a 12-0 run during which Columbia missed six shots. After Brittney Carfora finally sank a jumper, the Lions again missed six shots in a row as the Big Green pushed its lead to 22-2 with 8:44 left in the first period. Dartmouth led by as much as 23 in the first half, heading to the locker room with a 28-9 lead. The Light Blue shot just 16.9 percent in the half.

Two rallies sparked by aggressive pressing defense brought the Lions as close as nine in the second half, but they never got closer, falling 59-41.

Columbia held Dartmouth’s freshman forward Brittney Smith—who scored a season-high 22 points in the last meeting—to nine, but Columbia ended up shooting 25 percent and was outshot 34-12 at the foul line.

Friday’s game at Harvard, a back-and-forth affair with 16 lead changes, could not have been more different, but its start was reminiscent of the Lions’ last game against the Crimson. Playing on the road, Harvard jumped out to a 13-4 lead and went ahead 20-11 with 12:06 to play. Unlike last time, however, Columbia fought back in the first half of play and never let the game get out of hand.

A Danielle Browne 3-pointer started a steady 17-7 rally that gave the Lions their first lead. They took that lead into the half despite being dominated on point in the paint 14-8, and on second-chance points, 8-0.

The game went back and forth in the second half, and the Light Blue led 65-64 with just under two minutes to play. A 4-0 spurt put the Crimson back on top. With 23 seconds to play, senior guard Lindsey Hallion made just one of her two free throws to extend the lead to two, but junior forward Adrian Budischak grabbed one of Harvard’s 21 offensive rebounds and was fouled. She sank both free throws, and despite a late Sara Yee 3-pointer, the Crimson prevailed 71-70.

The Lions shot a season-high 54 percent but trailed 42-22 on the boards, including a 21-2 deficit on the offensive glass. After shooting nine free throws in the first half, Columbia failed to take a single attempt in the second—Harvard took 15.
Browne led the Lions with 14 points while Michele Gage and Kathleen Roehrkasse chipped in 13 apiece.

Katie Rollins, who, like Smith, notched a career-high in her last meeting against the Lions, was just 5-for-14 from the field. She and junior guard Emily Tay led the team with 14 points apiece.

This upcoming weekend, the Lions play Penn and Princeton, and have a good chance to finish the season over .500, after being picked to finish just seventh in the preseason pool.