Returning over 96% of the team’s points, rebounds and minutes from last year’s WNIT quarterfinal team, expectations are high for the Columbia women this season. The Lions took their initial step toward the program’s first ever NCAA Tournament bid with a 77-69 victory over Memphis at the Elma Roane Fieldhouse on Monday night.
The game was knotted at seven halfway through the opening frame, but the Tigers finished the quarter on a 11-2 run. Down eight with just over a minute to go, the Lions returned the favor and ended the half on 8-2 run to cut the deficit to two. Memphis extended the lead to four, 54-50, after three quarters.
But the game would quickly turn in Columbia’s favor.
Thirty seconds into the fourth quarter, Kitty Henderson stole an inbounds pass and was flagrantly fouled by Memphis’ best player, Jamirah Shutes. Hannah Pratt came in to make both free throws and Abbey Hsu hit a layup on the immediate possession to tie the game at 54. Katilyn Davis nailed a jumper from the middle of the lane a minute later to put the Lions up two. The Tigers kept it close, but Columbia stretched the lead to eight at the four-minute mark and never looked back.
While last year’s team was incredibly resilient, overcoming four double-digit deficits, it was also defined by its depth, with eight players averaging over 15 minutes per game. None of those players graduated, but the Lions were missing three of those athletes on opening night.
Seniors Carly Rivera and Sienna Durr were not available, while sophomore Noa Comesaña was out due to a season-ending injury. Despite not having Comesaña, who started 16 games in the frontcourt last season, senior Hannah Pratt moved into the starting lineup and finished with a strong 15-point, six-rebound, six-assist performance.
Hsu, coming off a year where she finished with an Ivy League record 108 three-pointers, picked up where she left off in March, hitting four of nine from downtown. Along with leading all players from beyond the arc, the Parkland, Fla. native hit game highs in points (24) and made free throws (six). While the offensive production is nothing new to Ivy fans, Hsu showed a more aggressive approach on the defensive end, ending with five defensive rebounds, two blocks and a steal.
Davis, the Lions’ first team All-Ivy forward, struggled early, picking up two fouls in the opening nine minutes and scoring only two points in the first three quarters. But she came through in the clutch, adding seven points in the decisive fourth frame. Jaida Patrick, the team’s third-leading scorer last year, added 14 points.
A big plus for Columbia was its work at the line, where the Lions ultimately won the game. Last year’s squad was 54th in the nation in attempted free throws, but its 63% success rate was 343rd in Division 1. On Monday, the Lions got to the charity stripe 30 times and made 80% (24) of those shots. The Tigers, meanwhile, only got to the line 11 times, making only six shots there.
“That’s something we’ve been working on a lot. It’s something that kind of plagued us last season,” Coach Megan Griffith told ESPN+. “I’m really proud to see it pay off now.”
Other than the free throw shooting, the only real concern from last year’s historic team was their occasional inability to play with a sense of urgency for the full 40 minutes. The coach noted that trait continuing on Monday night, telling ESPN+, “It was good to see that urgency at the end of the game, but we’ve got to bring it in the beginning too.”
Things don’t get any easier for the Lions after the hard-fought victory over the AAC’s fifth-ranked team.
Knowing the team had to increase the strength of its schedule to help its NCAA chances, Columbia has 10 potential matchups against teams that made the 2022 NCAA and WNIT tournaments. With three of those games in a row, they’ll need to keep all the positives from Monday, while making the necessary adjustments and getting all their seniors on the floor, as they head to CAA Champion Delaware on Thursday, welcome Vanderbilt on Sunday and head to Seton Hall, the team that knocked them out of the WNIT, on the 17th.