After four months and 26 games, the Columbia women’s basketball team has arrived at its final weekend. The Lions travel to Yale on Friday and Brown on Saturday for their 27th and 28th contests.
Last weekend, Columbia (6-20, 5-7 Ivy) went 1-1 in its last two home games. The Lions earned a 61-54 victory over Penn on Feb. 25 before suffering a 52-65 loss to Princeton on Feb. 26. Against Penn, junior guard Melissa Shafer led Columbia with 15 points, while sophomore forward Tyler Simpson scored 12. Against Princeton, senior forward Lauren Dwyer scored a team-high 12 points, senior guard Kathleen Barry had 11, and Shafer had 10.
Columbia beat Brown and Yale at home earlier this season, achieving a 72-49 victory against the Bears on Feb. 4 and a 67-57 win over the Bulldogs on Feb. 5. But the Lions are winless on the road, meaning that past results may not indicate how they will fare this weekend.
“It’ll definitely be different,” Dwyer said of facing Yale and Brown away from Levien Gymnasium. “We’re not taking them lightly, whatsoever. We know that we still have our work cut out for us to prove that we can do well on the road.”
On the Lions’ last road swing, consisting of four games, the closest they got to a win was a 12-point loss at Dartmouth on Feb. 18. Columbia’s worst defeat in that stretch was a 46-77 loss at Harvard on Feb. 19.
If Columbia wins its final two games, it will finish Ivy League play with a 7-7 record and in no worse than fourth place. Of course, the Lions’ fortunes could also turn the other way. Two losses would drop them to 5-9 in the conference and possibly into eighth place.
Columbia was picked to finish fifth in the league in the 2010-11 Ivy preseason media poll. With the Lions mathematically eliminated from championship contention, their goal now is to finish in a position higher than the one predicted.
“We really do have a lot to play for,” Dwyer said.
Yale (13-13, 9-3) is currently in second place in the conference standings. The Bulldogs have won five of six games, including their past three, since losing to Columbia. In their most recent contest, on Feb. 26, they earned a 78-64 win at Harvard. The victory gave Yale a series sweep of the Crimson, something that the Bulldogs have not accomplished since 1994. Sophomore point guard Megan Vasquez scored a game-high 23 points, junior forward Michelle Cashen had 17, and freshman forward Janna Graf added 13.
Vasquez, with an average of 14.1 points per game, is the league’s second-highest scorer. On Feb. 28, she received Ivy Co-Player of the Week honors. But, with Cashen (8.1 points per game), Graf (9.7), and senior forward Mady Gobrecht (12.0) playing alongside her, Vasquez is far from Yale’s only threat.
“I don’t think we can box-and-one or triangle-and-two them, because they have too many other players that shoot the ball well consistently,” head coach Paul Nixon said.
Nixon said that Columbia likely would throw “a variety of defenders” at Vasquez on Friday, as the Lions did when they beat the Bulldogs in early February. “We’re going to have to really hunker down and guard her,” he said.
At Brown on Saturday, Columbia will have to defend against sophomore guard Sheila Dixon. Dixon scored a career-high 22 points in the Bears’ last game, a 56-55 win at Dartmouth on Feb. 26. It was Dixon who garnered Ivy Co-Player of the Week recognition with Vasquez on Monday. Dixon leads Brown (8-18, 4-8) with 10.9 points per contest.
“When she wants to shoot the ball, she can get a shot off,” Nixon said. “It’s really our challenge, defensively, to try and make sure that we make the shots she gets as challenging as possible.”
Nixon noted that Columbia will need to contain Dixon without fouling her. Against Penn last weekend, Barry and freshman guard Brianna Orlich both got into foul trouble when they defended against freshman guard Alyssa Baron, the league’s leading scorer.
If the Lions play aggressively and intelligently this weekend, they could achieve the fourth-place finish that they desire.
COMMENTS
Comments will be moderated in accordance with our comment policy