The Columbia women’s basketball team opened the defense of its Ivy League title by putting Penn deep in a hole early on, watching as Penn charged back to take the lead at halftime, and then reclaiming the game comfortably, 74-59, Saturday at the Palestra.
“It’s a great first game for us to learn a lot,” Columbia head coach Megan Griffith told reporters afterward.
“We talked about making a statement,” Griffith said. “Regardless of who [the opponent] is, especially when you’re playing against, one, a good team, and, two, a really good coach.”
What the Lions stated, clearly, was that they can dominate inside, run you ragged and kill you outside. In outscoring the Quakers by 16 points in the second half, they grabbed 20 rebounds to Penn’s 15, and went 6-for-14 from beyond the arc, to Penn’s 4-for-10. Columbia also succeeded with disciplined ballhandling and a harassing defense, committing just five turnovers in the second half, to Penn’s 11, while making six steals, to Penn’s three.
The game seemed to be all Columbia’s from the jump, with a first basket on a fast break a minute in. (On the afternoon, Columbia scored 10 points on fast breaks to none for Penn.) And the Quakers were misfiring from the field and missing connections on passes. Columbia led 9-0 before Penn junior guard Saniah Caldwell, coming off the bench to provide a steadying hand, made a layup for the Quakers’ first points, but the bleeding didn’t stop. The Lions extended their lead to 20-5 with two minutes left in the first quarter.
And then the floor seemed to tilt.
Simone Sawyer, who was sick for Penn’s previous game four days earlier, hit the first of her four threes for the day. A fastbreak layup for Columbia’s Kitty Henderson pushed the lead back to 14, but Penn started a 12-0 run to pull within two. Columbia got back to a six-point lead on a Henderson layup, but the last two-plus minutes of the half were all Penn: a driving layup by senior Lizzy Groetsch, a Columbia turnover, a Mataya Gayle layup with a nifty assist from Stina Almqvist, three straight Columbia misses and a Gayle three for an improbable 29-28 Penn halftime lead.
But Penn couldn’t sustain that level of play, at least not Saturday. Columbia’s Perri Page, a 5-foot-11 junior, came off the bench to lead all scorers with 17 points – seven in the third quarter – on 8-for-12 shooting plus nine rebounds. Three other Lions hit double figures: Riley Weiss (16), Marija Avlijas (11) and Henderson (11, plus six assists).
Sawyer, a stellar defender who has had her struggles from the field this year, led Penn’s scoring with 14 points on 5-for-8 shooting, including 4-for-6 outside. Gayle had 11, freshman forward Katie Collins had 10 points and nine rebounds, and Almqvist had nine points – breaking her streak of 20 games with double-digit scoring.
“There were some periods of the game that we’d like to have back,” Penn coach Mike McLaughlin told reporters. “I was proud of the way we competed. We fought. Just things need to go better for us, and credit Columbia.”
Penn (9-5, 0-1 Ivies) hosts a reborn Dartmouth (7-7, 1-0) next Saturday. Columbia (10-4, 1-0) will be back on the road against Cornell (4-10, 0-1).
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