Harris Walker

While football has struggled to win games all season long, the Lions have been able to find some silver lining in each of their losses. In the resiliency Columbia showed against Dartmouth and the solid 45 minutes of defense against Princeton, the coaching staff had something positive to focus on after the game. However, it will be a tall task for the coaching staff to find anything positive to focus on after the Lions’ 45-10 loss to Yale (6-1, 3-1 Ivy).

Nobody could use an extra day off like the Columbia football team. After a season that looked so promising at the start, the Lions currently sit at 2-4 with a 1-2 record in the Ivy League. While some of these losses have come at the hands of formidable opponents, it is difficult to call a team successful when it has 0.333 winning percentage.

The Lions knew going into the game that it would be a tough matchup with the current Ivy League-leading Dartmouth Big Green, so Columbia put up a competitive effort—for the first 21 minutes. Over the last 39 minutes of the game, Dartmouth scored 42 points before the Lions were able to get back on the board in the closing minutes of a 52-24 loss.

Despite being only five games into the season, the performance of the 2019 Lions has varied so much that one might wonder whether head coach Al Bagnoli is trotting out the same squad each week. Despite the wide spectrum of performances from the Lions over the course of the season, the roster has remained almost identical since September, outside of a few injuries here and there. Now, the main question heading into the team’s week six matchup against the 16th ranked Dartmouth Big Green is not so much who will be playing, but rather which version of the Light Blue will turn up in New Hampshire this Friday?

After three straight losses, football reclaimed an offensive prowess it has lacked all season, dominating on both sides of the ball en route to a 44-6 blowout Homecoming victory over Penn on Saturday at Wien Stadium.

After a 1-3 start to the season, the Lions are hoping they can turn their season around when they face against Penn in front of what will be a raucous homecoming crowd.

In their last non-conference contest before facing off against Ivy League opponents for the final six weeks of the season, the Lions fell to Central Connecticut State University 24-14.

Three games into the season, Columbia football has found itself in a precarious position. The Lions are under .500 for the first time since 2016. The offense has been held to just 10 points in two straight games. The team is losing the turnover battle by a margin of 7-3. And yet, heading into their week 4 matchup against the Central Connecticut Blue Devils, the Lions maintain the same sense of optimism they hadhad before the season began.

In its first conference game of the season, Columbia fell to defending Ivy League Champions Princeton 21-10 as the Lions’ offense was only able to score 10 points for the second consecutive game.

Coming off a disappointing home debut in which Columbia lost to Georgetown 24-10, the Lions (1-1, 0-2 Ivy) are hoping to bounce back this weekend when they take on defending Ivy League Champion Princeton for the team’s first conference bout.