Lions swept on the road, record evened to .500

Last week, the Columbia women’s basketball team had considered itself the underdog. By the end of the weekend, the Lions had proved that the rest of the Ivy League should regard them as such.
Columbia faltered in its two most recent games, suffering a 57-35 loss at Princeton on Friday before enduring a 60-40 defeat at Penn on Saturday. Though the losses came after the Lions had won three straight games and five of their last seven, their efforts this weekend looked more like extensions of Columbia’s 0-13 start to the season.

Columbia held Princeton to just 20 first-half points, but the Lions scored only 11 points themselves. Columbia went 4-for-32 from the field, meaning that the Lions hit just 12.5 percent of their shots. Ten of their misses came from three-point range.

“Somewhere between Levien and getting down here, we forgot how to shoot,” head coach Paul Nixon said in a postgame interview. “When you shoot the ball as poorly as we did in the first half, it doesn’t matter how good a job you do defensively—a good team is not going to let you stay in the game for very long.”

Senior center Lauren Dwyer was 4-for-11 from the field in the first half, making her the only Columbia player to hit a field goal in the first 20 minutes and giving her eight points at the intermission. Her first basket of the second half, with 10:19 remaining, gave her 1000 points for her career. Dwyer scored 12 points overall, raising her career total to 1002.

“The only positive thing I feel like we can take from this game is the fact that she did get her thousand points,” Nixon said. “It’s the one bright spot.”

Princeton took a 20-point lead, 48-28, with 5:12 left in the game. The Tigers stretched their advantage to as many as 25 points in the final minutes and finished the night with a 22-point win.
Senior guard Addie Micir and junior guard Lauren Edwards finished with just five points apiece for Princeton. Junior center Devona Allgood went 6-for-13 from the field and finished with a game-high 13 points for the Tigers.

The Tigers benefited from 29 points from their bench, while the Lions’ bench scored only seven points. Junior guard Melissa Shafer and sophomore point guard Taylor Ball were scoreless, while sophomore forward Tyler Simpson scored only two points.

The Lions’ offense remained inconsistent against Penn, while the Quakers opened the game with a 9-0 run. Columbia did not score until 15:46 was left in the first half, when freshman guard Brianna Orlich hit a three-pointer. That shot started an 11-2 Columbia run, during which senior guard Kathleen Barry hit a jumper and Orlich hit two more three-pointers to tie the game at 11-11 with 12:19 to play.

With 5:41 left in the first half, Penn took a 22-14 lead. Columbia went on another run, however, and the score was knotted at 25-25 at halftime.

Both teams started the second half with missed shots. Penn’s first field goal, with 15:55 left, began an 11-0 Penn run. Columbia did not hit a field goal until Orlich’s three-pointer with 11:33 remaining made the score 37-29 in Penn’s favor.

Penn answered with a layup to extend its lead to 10 points. Then, with 10:04 left, freshman point guard Taylor Ward hit a three-pointer. Penn missed three shots on its next possession. After Orlich corralled a defensive rebound, Ward sent a pass out of bounds. Columbia had wasted a chance to cut its deficit to four or five points.

Penn hit a three-pointer to take a 42-32 lead and stole the ball on Columbia’s next possession. That steal led to a three-point play by freshman guard Alyssa Baron, which gave Penn a 45-32 lead and shifted the momentum firmly in the Quakers’ direction. Penn led by double digits the rest of the way.

Baron went 3-for-14 from the field and finished with eight points, well below her season average (a league-high 17.3 points per game) entering the weekend. Columbia held Baron to just two points on 1-for-6 shooting in the first half.

Columbia’s bench continued to struggle, totaling just seven points again. Shafer and Simpson each were 0-for-3 from the field, while Ball did not take any shots. Freshman forward Blaine Frohlich was impressive, however, following 2-for-2 shooting against Princeton with 2-for-5 shooting against Penn.

In a league in which anything has been possible this year, Columbia’s 4-2 Ivy record had not been a terrible thing. Had the Lions improved their conference record to 6-2 this weekend, they would be bona fide title contenders. Harvard, which entered the weekend as the only team with a perfect Ivy record, got swept by Yale and Brown, while Princeton, now in first place, has one Ivy loss.

As it stands, Columbia is now in fourth place. Yale, a team that Columbia beat by 10 points last weekend and that—like Columbia—entered the weekend with a 4-2 Ivy record, improved to 6-2 with wins over Harvard and Dartmouth.

“I don’t think we’re going to be in the race if we have four or five [Ivy] losses,” Nixon said after the loss to Princeton. “We’re not out of it yet, but tomorrow night’s very important.”
“Tomorrow night” resulted in Columbia’s fourth conference loss.

“It’s definitely a step backward,” Nixon said after the game, referring to the entire weekend. “This team [Columbia] showed that we’re capable of doing some things in the last month at home. Now, we have to show that we’re capable of doing something away from home. And, fortunately, we have four more opportunities to do that.”