Mike-Krzyzewski

Mike Smith, CC ’20, a former star for the Lions who transferred to the University of Michigan last year, has announced that he will enter the NBA Draft. Smith was a key contributor to the Wolverines, who earned a spot in the Elite Eight in the NCAA March Madness tournament this year before being knocked out by UCLA.

When Kenny Blakeney joined Jim Engles’ staff in 2018, he was trying to satisfy “an itch.”

Coming into the decade, expectations were not extremely high for the men’s soccer program. It had not earned an Ancient Eight crown in 17 years, Ivy League Player of the Year since 1993, and NCAA tournament berth since 1991.

Since the inception of major league and collegiate athletics, there has been a large following of superfans—even for teams that struggle to perform.

Over the past decade, the Columbia men’s basketball program has featured two head coaches, a number of high-impact players that helped redefine what individual success can look like at Levien Gymnasium, and a few high-intensity moments that will be talked about for decades. And yet, despite these undoubtedly positive developments, the defining takeaway from this decade is that the team has been unable to break out of the pattern of mediocrity that has long been its reputation.

Columbia men’s basketball failed to secure its second Ivy League win this weekend. The losses to Princeton on Friday and Penn on Saturday marked the team’s 12th and 13th consecutive losses, cementing the Lions’ spot at the bottom of the Ancient Eight.

In what is now turning out to be the worst season of head coach Jim Engles’ four-year tenure, men’s basketball lost two more games to Ivy League opponents this weekend. The Light Blue’s latest losses mark its drop to 6-21 on the season, a disastrous 1-11 record in Ivy League play, and an 11-game losing streak that extends to its second conference game this season.

While the highlight from this weekend’s men’s basketball games may have been the renaming of the Levien Gymnasium’s basketball court in honor of Jonathan Schiller, CC ’69, Law ’73, it is becoming readily apparent that the Lions may be the ones in need of a makeover, as the team dropped both its games for the fourth week in a row.

The Columbia men’s basketball team’s rough start to the Ivy League season continued this weekend as the Lions lost two back-to-back games, squandering late leads in both games and raising questions about this team’s ability to execute down the stretch.

The Columbia men’s basketball team experienced another tough weekend of Ivy League play, falling to both Penn and Princeton. bringing the Lions’ to their fifth consecutive loss of the season.