The numbers: 8-9 overall, 1-3 Ivy, 258th RPI, 272nd Sagarin, 288th Pomeroy
The recent results: lost 81-59 vs. Cornell (1/28)
The upcoming schedule: vs. Harvard (2/3), vs. Dartmouth (2/4)

Poor second-half starts
Things were looking up for the Lions at halftime on Saturday. They had ended the half with a 14-3 run to lead by three at intermission. But Cornell stormed out of the locker room and went on its own 12-2 run. This was the fourth straight game — all against Ivy opponents — that Columbia has played poorly after halftime. The week before in Ithaca the Big Red outscored the Lions 12-3 to start the second half. And the previous weekend, Princeton and Penn reeled off 9-2 and 16-0 spurts, respectively. Either the team’s intensity is lacking at the start of the second half, or Joe Jones is losing the halftime adjustment chess match.

Getting it done from the arc
Columbia is shooting a league-best 38.3 percent from three-point range on the season. John Baumann (45.0 percent), Justin Armstrong (36.4 percent), K.J. Matsui (44.9 percent), Dragutin Kravic (39.0 percent), Brett Loscalzo (38.9 percent), Dalen Cuff (35.9 percent), and Dan Trepanier (40.0 percent) are all shooting over 35 percent from distance. With perimeter threats like those, the Lions would do well to take more threes. Only 31.9 percent of Columbia’s field goal attempts this season are three-point attempts — a lower figure than anyone else in the league outside of the triphobes at Yale.

Cuff in a rough stretch
Dalen Cuff started out the season on fire from the outside, hitting 12 of 16 three-point attempts. Since then, however, Cuff is 2 of 23 from beyond the arc. He also missed over a month with a foot injury, and then there was the unfortunate incident in overtime at Princeton where the senior co-captain called with none remaining. With freshman K.J. Matsui shooting the ball extremely well, Jones may have no choice but to bench his senior leader in favor of the young sharpshooter.

Losing the turnover battle
Despite ranking no worse than 151st in the nation in effective field goal percentage, offensive rebounding, free throw rate, and free throw percentage, Columbia’s offense ranks just 252nd in adjusted efficiency. The reason? Turnovers. The Lions give the ball back to the other team 25.4 percent of the time. Only 21 other teams in all of Division I are worse in that department. The Lions had the same problem last season, but had done a much better job early on this year of minimizing the miscues. In the first ten games Columbia turned over the ball on just 23.6 percent of its possessions. However, that figure has ballooned to 30.5 percent in the last seven contests. Columbia is even more inept at forcing turnovers on defense, owning the 10th-worst opponent turnover rate in the nation. The result is a league-worst -4.59 average turnover margin this season.

Statistical oddities
John Baumann’s 19- and 16-point efforts against Cornell marked the first back-to-back double-figure scoring games for the sophomore since December 10 and 23… Justin Armstrong got major playing time early on this season, averaging 25.8 minutes per game in the first eight games. In the last nine games, however, Armstrong has played more than 20 minutes just twice and is seeing the floor an average of just 18.4 minutes per game in that span… Mack Montgomery shot 36.5 percent from three-point range as a freshman, but is just 6 of 25 (24.0 percent) this season… Point guard Brett Loscalzo has just three three-pointers in the last seven contests combined.