It wasn’t the prettiest game, but Columbia women’s basketball still cruised to an 82-53 victory over Cornell Saturday afternoon at Levien Gymnasium.
With the team’s ninth straight win, the Lions (11-4, 2-0 Ivy) are undefeated in league play and tied with Princeton and Brown at the top of the standings. Cornell (6-8, 0-2), meanwhile, is winless in the conference and knotted up with Yale and Dartmouth at the bottom of the table.
In last year’s regular season finale, Columbia clinched its first-ever Ivy League title at home but was kept on its heels by Cornell. The Lions had to go an extra five minutes for the historic victory. The difficult win dropped the Lions’ NET rating and moved them to the No. 2 seed in the Ivy League Tournament.
With a quick turnaround on Monday against Yale and a showdown at Princeton set for next Saturday, Columbia looked to avoid a repeat of last year’s Empire State battle.
The deeper Lions roster was aggressive from the start, pushing the pace against the more methodical Big Red and opening up a 31-15 lead with 5:30 to go in the second quarter.
But Columbia was also careless, committing seven turnovers and four fouls over the remainder of the half.
Cornell used a 7-for-8 effort from the charity stripe to cut the deficit to seven with just over a minute to go, but a pair of free throws from junior guard Kitty Henderson and a layup from sophomore forward Susie Rafiu gave the hosts a 37-26 lead at the break.
Over the opening 20 minutes, the Lions shot a strong 65% (11-for-17) from inside the arc, which overcame the 27% (3-for-11) shooting from three and 60% (6-for-10) from the free throw line.
In all eight different players scored for Columbia with Henderson and junior guard Cecelia Collins leading the way at eight points apiece.
For Cornell, the first half was all about free throws and Emily Pape.
The sophomore forward from Park Ridge, Ill. scored 15 points on 64% (7-for-11) shooting, while the rest of her team hit only 14% (2-for-14) from the field.
Defensively, the Lions used their +14 and +43% advantages on the glass to get 14 more fastbreak and 10 more second-chance points. If it wasn’t for the team’s 10 fouls and 15 turnovers, which led to 15 Cornell points, the game may have been over by the midway point.
Columbia continued to foul too much at the start of the third quarter and Cornell used another 7-for-8 effort from the line to make it 42-33 at the 6:41 mark.
But the Lions found the right level of defensive aggressiveness and only sent Cornell to the charity stripe four more times the rest of the quarter. During that time, the hosts hit nine of their last 12 shots and held the Big Red to 3 of 7 shooting to open up an insurmountable 62-42 lead.
On the afternoon, Henderson finished with a stat-stuffing 15 points, 11 rebounds, six assists, five steals and a block.
Senior guard Abbey Hsu also had a big day, ending up with 20 points (11 in the fourth quarter), eight rebounds, six assists, four steals and a block. She left the game in 10th place all-time for Ivy League women’s basketball scoring, overtaking Brown’s Justine Gaziano (2016-20).
Collins had 10 points, eight assists and six rebounds despite foul trouble limiting her to 23 minutes.
The Columbia bench also acquitted itself well with Rafiu adding 10 points (six in the first half) and first-year guard Riley Weiss netting 10 of her own (eight in the second half).
For Cornell, Pape totaled 19 points, six steals and four rebounds, while rookie guard Clarke Jackson finished with 10 points.
The Lions welcome Yale on Monday afternoon to try and stretch their winning streak to 10 games. On the other hand, Cornell, which lost to Princeton by 41 points last weekend and is on a three-game losing streak, will try to get into the win column at Penn.