HANOVER, N.H. – Kevin Hovde knew his first order of business coming into Columbia was cleaning up the defensive end of the floor, which turned out to be his predecessor Jim Engles’ undoing, along with some unfortunately timed injuries.
Columbia has finished 300th or worse in defensive efficiency nationally in every season since the COVID pandemic, but in the 2025-26 nonconference slate, almost everything was going according to plan for the first-year head coach, who helped improve Florida’s defense on its way to a national championship last season. The Lions went 11-3 and, according to the computers, were clearly the second best team in the Ivy League behind Yale.
However, four games into the Ivy League campaign, Columbia inexplicably sat dead last in defensive efficiency (1.266 points per possession), behind even Cornell – which gave up more than 100 points in each of its first three conference contests.
Even down Avery Brown, Zine Eddine Bedri, and Miles Franklin with injuries, the Lions showed plenty of grit Saturday afternoon at Leede Arena, breaking its three-game losing streak by holding off a late Dartmouth charge to prevail, 79-69.
“It was just doubling down on what we do,” Hovde said. “I felt like for a good stretch of the season, we were a pretty gritty team defensively, and we went through a tough stretch where we weren’t guarding the same way. When we met earlier in the week, we said, ‘We’re not changing anything, we just have to do what we do better.’ “ To these guys’ credit, they did a wonderful job defending as a team and executing.”
The Lions led 19-11, but they had to survive a dreadful stretch which saw them go 9:35 without a field goal, allowing Dartmouth to go on a 17-1 run (more like a brisk walk), but Columbia battled back and tied the game at 31-31 on a three-pointer by Gerard O’Keefe at the buzzer.
Columbia’s defense was at its best in the middle of the second half as it went on a 14-1 run to go up 48-37, extending that advantage to 71-54 with 6:30 left.
But – as they have several times in the last couple of seasons at Leede Arena – Dartmouth fought back to get within three on a Brandon Mitchell-Day layup with 2:13 left, but after a Hovde timeout, Kenny Noland got an uncontested layup, and the Lions’ defense got a few stops in a row to put the game away.
Noland, who is putting together a stellar senior campaign, finished with 29 points and 10 rebounds, including 12-for-12 from the free throw line (Noland is now 62-for-65 on the season). The Lions were 8-38 in Ivy League play in his career, so any road win is a good one in his book.
“We haven’t really done anything in my time here as far as in the Ivy League, so I think it’s just leaving everything out there on the court,” Noland said. “It’s just about going out there every day in practice and putting the work in.”
Columbia did an especially good job on the red-hot Kareem Thomas, holding him to just 11 points on 2-for-10 shooting (0-for-6 on two-point shots). Dartmouth did shoot 12-for-28 from behind the three-point arc, but it was tough sledding inside, where it went just 10-for-30. Columbia was giving up 53.5% in that category in conference play entering Saturday. In all, the Big Green finished at 0.97 points per possession.
“I thought they protected the paint well,” Dartmouth coach David McLaughlin said. “Their verticality and physicality was good. I thought there was a couple of plays we should have finished in the paint and didn’t, and a couple of others we should have gotten two feet down and kick it out. So we had to either finish or make a good decision in the paint, and we just weren’t consistent enough against that.”
The Lions also got 16 points from NYU transfer Hampton Sanders in 32 minutes, much more than Hovde probably expected before the injuries, but Sanders has been equal to the task. Sanders played for Hovde’s brother-in-law Dave Klatsky last season a few subway stops away in Manhattan, and when Hovde got the Columbia job, Klatsky – who took his place on the Florida staff – recommended Sanders as someone that could help him, and could obviously handle Columbia academically.
Dartmouth faces a three-game road trip, including Friday night at league-leading and overwhelming favorite Yale.
Columbia now goes back to Manhattan for a three-game homestand (Penn, Princeton, Cornell) as it looks to become the eighth and final team to qualify for its first Ivy Madness.
“We just have to worry about ourselves and everything else will take care of itself,” Hovde said. It’s all about the process, we just want to make ourselves hard to beat and that will put us where we need to be in the end.”