Yale

As the world grapples with the wide-reaching effects of the coronavirus, sports, for the moment, have been effectively canceled.

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 (6-14) continued to struggle on the road as the team dropped games against both Yale (16-4) and Brown (9-8). While the result was the same in both contests, the Lions put out very different performances in each matchup.

Men’s swimming and diving posted sounding victories over Army, Penn, and Yale to open its season. Columbia won 179-121 and set a pool record against Penn, before triumphing over Yale 172-128.

During a Friday meet at the Percy Uris Natatorium, Columbia women’s swimming and diving (1-1, 1-1 Ivy) lost to Yale (3-0, 2-0 Ivy) by a decisive margin of 45 points. The meet saw slow freestyle and butterfly times, but a strong performance from the team’s first-years.

In volleyball’s last homestand of the season, the Lions fell just short. Despite an outstanding performance from first-year outside hitter Pierce Woodall, Brown overpowered the Lions 3-1 on Friday night. Then on Saturday, Columbia could not break through a stifling Yale defense on Senior Night, falling 3-0 to the 2018 Ivy League Champions in front of a packed gymnasium.

Saturday afternoon saw the Ivy League trophy slip out of reach for Columbia men’s soccer, as it fell on the road 2-0 to Yale. Stagnating at five points in the Ivy League, the Lions moved to the fifth position in the Ivy League table, ahead only of Harvard.

In what is beginning to look like a pattern, the buzzer to end regulation sounded with the Lions’ game still knotted up: a 3-3 tie at the end of the fourth quarter in Friday’s matchup against Yale sent Columbia to its fourth consecutive overtime game.

Coming off of two consecutive away draws, women’s soccer ruined Yale’s title dream with a 3-1 victory at home. The Lions’ offense seemed to be rejuvenated, scoring more than one goal in Ivy Play for the first time since the 2-0 win against Cornell on Sept. 28, five games ago.

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).