21 Comments
And the Lions were like “ROARRRRRR”
You may have heard about Columbia’s triumphant near-win last night. Baller Jeremy Sherman brings you the inside scoop.
Columbia Athletics has finally gained some national attention, and deservedly so. The Lion Ballers had their best loss of the season, and possibly one of the best for any Columbia sport in recent memory.
On Friday, Columbia lost to the Michigan State Spartans 62-53.
The greatness of the loss can only be appreciated with a bit of context, so here it is. As it happens, some schools that have basketball teams are concerned with national competition, so the Associated Press releases a list of rankings every week for the top 25 teams in the NCAA. Michigan State was at No. 2, and had just defeated No. 1 Kentucky, so they will presumably take the top spot after this week once the new rankings come out.
Not so fast, said Roar-ee: Columbia wasn’t going to go down without a fight. In fact, they had a 26-22 lead at the half.
While the national stage might have changed some people, the Lion Ballers stayed humble. Rather than seek fame and recognition for upsetting the No. 2 team in the country, the Lions maintained their identity and found a way to pull out the loss.
When they had a lead with four minutes left, Columbia eased off the gas pedal and refrained from scoring the rest of the game. It was an incredibly classy move by the Lions. They could feel the tension among the 15,000 in the crowd who feared their team would lose its chance at a No. 1 ranking, as well as the thousands of subscribers watching the game live on the Big Ten network and those poor AP analysts. In the end, the Lions players figured it was better for everyone just to disappoint the four people at Columbia who actually knew there was a basketball game going on.
After the game the Lions congratulated MSU, and included some references to the Spartans in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. The MSU Spartans appreciated this, even though they had no idea what it meant.
For a fan who’s sick of watching Columbia Athletics lose to no-name schools like Monmouth, Manhattan, and Harvard, it was nice to finally lose a game to a team with a national presence–and especially after giving such a monumental and impressively strong fight. The Lions got attention from media like CBS Sports, Bleacher Report, and were even featured in a highlight on ESPN’s iconic Sports Center. While fans of Columbia athletics see a lot of losses over the course of the year, its safe to say that this one was truly special. After last night’s game, we’re actually looking forward to watching the rest of this season.
Picture from the scene of the crime via Shutterstock
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21 Comments
@Anonymous Honestly, because of this article, you have lost a reader. I know you guys like to get humorous on bwog, but this is our team you’re talking about. Maybe rethink how you approach these types of stories (you know, stories that actually deserve straight up respect). This was in no way the path to take in “congratulating” OUR team. I’m disappointed in the way this was handled and wonder how this article even made it through the Editors-in-Chief.
@Anonymous so sick of bwog trying to sound like they are so much cooler than everyone else this article is such a shame the bball team killed it the other night and they don’t need some newspaper attempting to write sarcastic comments its pathetic. also a lot of people knew about the game (not just two)
GOOD JOB MENS BBALL YOU ALL SERIOUSLY WERE AMAZING
@;.,!?- Meet punctuation, your new best friend.
@Is this a joke? MSU played like shit. Columbia played like they always do…and they lost.
@Anonymous You are either a troll or an asshole.
@Anonymous I’m an asshole troll, but that doesn’t make Columbia any better at basketball.
@anon http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1qtoq4/michigan_state_students_fool_opponents_into_2/
Made the front page of reddit…
@anon So it seems bwog is going to hell with its dumb edgy shit. Who is down to make a new news site with me?
@Apologetic Author Just wanted to apologize to the people who found this insulting. The jokes were intended to be backhanded compliments, I just didn’t do a very good job. I really am proud of what our team did, and again, sorry for any hard feelings.
@Then change it, or take it down. Why did the compliments need to be backhanded anyway?
@Apologetic Author Agreed, I made a mistake and just used the wrong tone for this article. I can’t personally take it down, but I will ask. I see now that the way it reads was the opposite of my intention, so I really am sorry.
@Alexandra To reaffirm: we really, sincerely were impressed by the turnout of this game, the boys played hard and it was an awesome testament to the fact that our team actually is a contender on the national level (see: tags).
I apologize to the readers and the team for the edge on this piece – it was poor judgment. In the future we will be clear about our teams’ successes, which very much deserve to be praised and celebrated.
Just so you know how legitimately proud and excited we are for the team, here’s Bwog’s email thread when we first got a tip that we were ahead:
“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“Kind of a big deal”
“Very cool”
“They lost by 9 points in the end…); That our team could hold its own against a perennial basketball power, especially one from the Big 10, is hella awesome.”
And, finally, “Fucking Michigan State (diehard UMichigan fan).”
@Okay Sincere apology? Check. Okay, we’re over it.
@Anonymous No, they’re actually being serious here… just the writer doesn’t have a very good tone to express this
@Anonymous WTF Bwog. Our Lions are a great team and a great bunch of guys. This is not funny. It is unkind.
It is one thing to be funny, it is another to be mean to your classmates.
@Anonymous yeah wait actually fuck this
this is 100 % the wrong angle to take on a close loss to one of the best teams in the country
@Anonymous this is pretty awful, even for bwog. what’s the basketball team done to deserve this?
@Kristyn I really don’t get the point of this, but regardless it’s pretty insulting to the team and making a joke out of something they take seriously and I’m sure were really upset about.
@Anonymous I thought this was pretty dumb and unfunny too.
But if you say, “It’s pretty insulting to the team and making a joke out of something they take seriously,” then nobody could probably joke about anything ever in the history of time.
@Kristyno You’re right. I had a hard time trying to word what I wanted to say. I guess I was just confused as to why the author chose to joke about this of all things.
@anon what the fuck is this? just stringing together snarky insults. This wasn’t funny, just dumb.