Garden variety disappointment

Columbia kicked off the post-holiday Ivy action with a disheartening loss at the Garden last night to a less-than-stellar St. John’s team. Five Ivies play tonight, in games taking place all over the country. Given the matchups, a winning night for the league would be a smashing success.

St. John’s embarrasses Columbia
Last night’s game against St. John’s at Madison Square Garden was huge for the Lions. The Red Storm was missing its best player, Darryl Hill, and aside from a respectable performance at Duke its last time out, the Johnnies had not been impressive at all this season. A Columbia win would have generated a tremendous amount of attention in the New York media and been a huge boost to the program. But a golden opportunity turned into an ugly televised rout. The Lions came out looking shaky and scared, and found themselves down 23-6 midway through the first half. Columbia found its legs somewhat the final 30 minutes, but would get no closer than 13 points the rest of the way and ended up losing by 24. No Lion reached double digits in scoring, and the frontcourt shot just 4 of 16 from the field.

Tonight’s action
Columbia (6-4) vs. St. Peter’s (5-5) – 6:30 pm, Madison Square Garden – FSN New York at 10:30 pm (delayed)
The Lions get a chance to atone somewhat for last night’s disappointment when they take on St. Peter’s in the consolation game of the Panasonic Holiday Festival at the Garden. The key for Columbia is probably to let national scoring leader Keydren Clark get his points, but keep his teammates in check. The Lion frontcourt should have an advantage inside, where St. Peter’s has just two players on the roster over 6-7 and only one of them — 6-10 Ivan Bozovic — gets major minutes. The good news for Columbia is that its opponent ranks 299th nationally in getting to the line, which has hurt the Lions in several games this season. Defensive rebounding also has been a weak spot for the Peacocks this year, so look for John Baumann and Ben Nwachukwu to have big games inside. St. Peter’s is a 4.5-point favorite.

Albany (4-6) at Brown (2-7) – 7:00 pm
The Bears will try to rebound from a pair of disapointing home losses when preseason American East favorite Albany comes to the Pizzitola Center. The Great Danes started out the year 1-5, but have won three of their last four contests. Brown’s offense continues to rank near the bottom of Division I, with the exception of generating free throw attempts. The good news is that Albany hasn’t exactly been stifling defensively this year, so this could be a good chance to get untracked offensively. The Brown game notes claim senior tri-captain Luke Ruscoe will be a game-time decision due to an injury suffered in the first half of last week’s UMES loss. If Ruscoe is unable to go, Brown may have trouble hanging with a decent Albany team.

Carnegie Mellon at Princeton (2-7) – 7:30 pm
It’s usually accepted that Division III and Division I are apples and oranges because of the size, quickness, and athleticism disparities. Even a struggling Princeton squad should handle a Division III opponent easily — even an undefeated, ranked DIII opponent. But this Tiger squad probably doesn’t have much of a quickness advantage and at least height-wise, the Tartans match up fairly well, with players listed at 6-6, 6-7, and 6-8 in their rotation. Still, Princeton should win this one going away, unless this is one of the nights the shots aren’t falling. Because Carnegie Mellon can shoot. The Tartans come in shooting almost 50 percent from the field as a team on the season and nearly 40 percent from the arc. You can bet CMU has beeen looking forward to this game ever since Joe Scott called and offered them the game back in September, and it’s had nearly three weeks to work on its zone defense. Division I talent should carry the day, but with Princeton’s confidence running low, this game has some Tiger fans nervous. Is it for good reason? We’ll have a better idea at around 9:00 pm tonight.

Dartmouth (1-6) at New Mexico (7-4) – 8:00 pm
The Big Green feels like it’s regressing right now. After starting out with a decent performance at ranked Boston College in the season opener and beating UC Davis in its home debut, Dartmouth has lost its last five games. And four of those losses were bad losses. The Big Green is coming off the low point so far: a 31-point shellacking at home at the hands of a very mediocre Vermont team. Now Terry Dunn flies his team across the country to play in one of the toughest venues in the land, when Dartmouth takes on New Mexico at The Pit in Albuquerque, where the Lobos are 7-0 this season. New Mexico likes to slow things way down and takes very good care of the ball, while shooting it well. The Lobo coaches undoubtedly saw a tape of Dartmouth’s televised loss at Quinnipiac, and will take a page from the Bobcats’ book and pressure the perimeter to take Dartmouth out of sync offensively. The way the Big Green is playing right now, this one has the potential to get out of hand. 20 points might look pretty good by the end of the night.

Harvard (8-4) at Southern Methodist (5-4) – 8:00 pm
Frank Sullivan’s team closes out its non-league slate with a road game in Dallas against SMU, still without Brian Cusworth. The two teams play at very different paces, with the Crimson favoring a much more up-tempo game. Harvard ranks high in defensive efficiency and is struggling to get the most out of its offense, while the Mustangs are the opposite. Sullivan needs to get a strong defensive rebounding performance out of his big men, because Southern Methodist ranks seventh in the nation in offensive rebounding percentage. With Cusworth this could have been a very interesting game, but with him in street clothes, the Mustangs being 8-point favorites sounds fairly reasonable.

Jake Wilson

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Basketball U.

Jake Wilson wrote 754 posts

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