WEST HAVEN, Conn. – Contrary to popular belief, Friday’s Columbia season opener at Division I neophyte New Haven was not Kevin Hovde’s first shot at being a head coach.
No, back when he was a young assistant on the Upper West Side from 2011 to 2016 under Kyle Smith, there was an opportunity to schedule a handful of junior varsity games with Columbia’s big roster and Hovde drew the short straw to roam the sidelines as the man in charge.
“We had a three game schedule, we played the Army and Navy JV, and I want to say a prep school,” Hovde said. “But I went 2-1, so I had a winning record, even though I did lose one.”
His main job was, of course, helping Smith make the team better and the Lions enjoyed prosperity it didn’t for a long time before or since in those years, posting the only two Ivy League winning records (2013-14 and 2015-16) the program has in the last three decades, including the 2016 CIT title.
So Hovde’s mission is clear: Get Columbia back to the level it was a decade ago and qualify for its first Ivy League Tournament. It was a small step Friday, but a decisive one in a wire-to-wire 71-53 win over New Haven at the Hazell Athletic Center in the Chargers’ first Division I home game.
While Hovde has no head coaching experience, he said afterward he has coached in some big games.
Does last April’s national championship game count? Florida, with Hovde on the bench, won that game 65-63 over Houston, an alternative universe from the 1,000-seat gym he was in Friday.
“There’s just nothing like it (being a head coach),” Hovde said. “You don’t know until you’re sitting in that chair. I’ve been in college basketball a long time and coached some pretty big games, but for sure, this is a different feeling when you’re making those decisions and standing up there.”
But Friday was a good first step for Hovde and his program. The Chargers didn’t exactly threaten UConn in Hartford Monday night, but it comfortably beat pregame expectations and made the Huskies work a little harder than they would have liked.
“I thought they [New Haven] played UConn really tough,” Hovde said. “I thought our guys were tough. We’ve been really focusing on ourselves the last three weeks, really, just trying to get better at the things that equate to winning. I felt like we tried to do that today for 40 minutes. We played the right way, and that’s the most important thing for our program right now.”
With the exception of a 12-0 New Haven run early in the second half, there was no such sweat for the Lions, who led 42-18 at the half and held the Chargers to 18-for-57 shooting (31.6%) and just .815 points per possession.
Hovde knows any Columbia improvement has to start on the defensive end, where the Lions were 336th nationally and dead last in the Ivy in defensive efficiency a season ago. It wasn’t an aberration, Columbia has finished eighth in Ivy defense in four of the last eight seasons, and has not finished in the top half since – you guessed it – 2015-16.
“We got going, but it was more our defense,” Hovde said. “We really did a good job with our verticality, showing our hands at the rim with every drive. I thought we were very disciplined to defend without fouling, and that gave us some opportunities in transition. We’re simple defensively right now, but we’ve really committed to a few different things and we’re trying to hold ourselves accountable to those things and not make things too complicated and not change things too much game to game given the scout. We just really have to focus on ourselves.”
Despite the coaching change, there is a good amount of continuity in the Columbia roster. Geronimo Rubio De La Rosa is gone, but he unfortunately missed most of the Ivy season with an injury. Kenny Noland had 14 points and fellow backcourt returner Avery Brown added 10. Blair Thompson (three points, six rebounds) started 23 games last season, while Zine Eddine Bedri (nine points, six rebounds) started 21, so they know what to expect out of the league.
Freshman Miles Franklin does not, but had 13 points on 5-for-5 shooting, and may provide some much-needed depth.
Columbia was picked at the bottom of the preseason coaches’ poll (and the same in the Ivy Hoops Online poll), which is understandable for a program that has gone 9-61 in conference play the last five seasons.
But there’s a new young sheriff in town. He has tasted success everywhere he’s gone in his career thus far, and he would like to keep it that way.