Basketball season is upon us! Bwog general assignment reporter CML reports on the sensational season opener. 

Figure 1What with the unlikely regression of the football team from last year’s record, hopes for the basketball team were high heading into last night’s opener.  Some expert analysts* even forecast the Lions as having a fighting chance to win the Ivy League this year.  We returned everyone important.  We run the kind of methodical and balanced offense that flusters teams better than us.  We play inspired and tenacious D.  So why not Columbia?  That question fell to our crosstown archnemesis Fordham, whose football team already eviscerated ours earlier this year.

Fordham, which plays in the eminently respectable and oft-underrated Atlantic 10 conference, was favored by a large margin coming into the game.  Blithely unaware of this, I arrived with companion Justin Vlasits a few minutes prior to tipoff, operating under the assumption that we had a decent chance of winning.  Strolling past a diverse mixture of fans (Fig. 1) and situating ourselves in the middle of the student section, we were soon joined by a wayward and middle-aged Fordham fan who was evidently unable to locate the writhing mass of Rams advocates at the opposite end of Levien.  Soon the game started, Light Blue against Communion Wine Crimson.  For the first few minutes neither team did anything to disprove my assumption, but I soon began to see what an uphill struggle it was going to be for the Lions. Shots – particularly those attempted by F John Baumann – weren’t falling, and Fordham’s superior size allowed it to command the boards, score multiple times off second chances, and shut down a vital facet of Columbia‘s offense by dominating interior presence C Ben Nwachukwu.  The Lions’ usually strong perimeter defense was unable to neutralize the outside game, and the Rams rained destruction from behind the three-point arc.

figure 2Soon we tired of the Fordham missionary’s enemy cheering and moved down to the second row of the student section, where a throng of raucous fans was attempting to neutralize the bad vibes propagating from the Rams’ rooting section.  Fordham’s second of seven trifectas in the first half put it ahead 12-7, which was as close as Columbia would get for the rest of the game.  Before I knew it, the half was over.  Columbia had accumulated a meager 26 points to Fordham’s 43.  I observed that this was not only half as many points as Duke piled on Columbia in last year’s opener, it was exactly how many points Columbia scored in that affair.

Halftime ended, and the Lions began to adjust to Fordham’s assertive style of play.  All in all the Lions matched the Rams step by step throughout the second half, being outscored a mere 36-35.  As the game’s inevitable outcome became more and more evident, the crowd got more and more into it, at least by Columbia standards.  The clock continued to wind down and the deficit stayed where it was, but it hardly felt like we were losing by 20 to our ‘rivals.’  Junior F Joe Bova, who was badass enough to return to Division I basketball after breaking his back a couple years ago, made a few inspirational plays. 
figure 3Sophomore G Patrick Foley showed us his sweet shot.  Levien was charged with the intensity of a high school gym.  Everyone – including the Rams fans, sadly – was having a good time as the clock expired and the scoreboard proclaimed a 79-61 Fordham victory.  Someone suggested a chant of “safety school,” which seemed unnecessarily flattering, especially when there were so many little things to cheer about already. 

Bottom line: the Lions lost to a team from a mid-major conference that they were supposed to lose to.  In spite of being outmatched in almost every way, we were only outscored by 1 for the last 20 minutes.  The bench was productive, the defense and offense adequate against a better team when they finally clicked. 

Near the beginning of the game my old floormate Ben turned to our row and asked: “Is it just me, or is Fordham completely athletically superior?”  Replied my other former floormate Matt: “It’s tough to play against teams that give out scholarships.”  This begs the question: what does this portend for our games against Penn?  And Harvard, Yale and Princeton?  Conference play is over two months away.  For now, stay tuned for a
figure 4non-conference schedule that includes doormat Delaware State and perennial powerhouse Villanova. 

The sordid details of the game can be found here.

            *My friend at Yale who cares too much about Ivy League sports.