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The best season in Columbia women’s basketball history is over.
Columbia came up on the low end of a see-saw showdown at Levien Gym Monday night, bowing out to Seton Hall, 78-75, in the Elite Eight round of the WNIT.
The Lions’ appearance in the WNIT national quarterfinals came after wins in each of the tournament’s first three rounds – the program’s first postseason wins since it joined Division I in 1986.
A Columbia team that had already set a single-season program record for wins kept the magic going Thursday night at Levien Gym, overcoming an ugly box score to pull off a beautiful finish.
“This is the business we’ve chosen.” – Brian Earl and Hyman Roth
“We played for, I would say, a good 15 minutes tonight, but that’s not good enough against a good program.” – Columbia head coach Megan Griffith, following the Lions defeat to top-seeded Princeton
No matter what the coaches who did not earn victories on Saturday thought, I felt there were three really good games of college basketball on display at Lavietes Pavilion, including a fantastic opener that saw Princeton escape an upset big from Cornell, 77-73. Hopefully, West Coast fans woke up at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning to catch it.
Here are some random thoughts and observations from the Ancient Eight’s Super Saturday:
Jaida Patrick scored a season-high 20 points and Abbey Hsu set the program record for three pointers in a season, as the Columbia women (18-4, 9-1 Ivy) held off a determined Harvard (12-11, 6-5 Ivy), 74-70, to earn a spot in the 2022 Ivy League Tournament.
The victory not only ensured the Lions their second straight ticket to the league’s postseason party, but it also tied the school record for wins in a Division I season and an Ivy League campaign (2009-10).
For the first time in the calendar year, the Lions welcomed the general public to Levien Gymnasium and 1,000-plus members of the campus community came out to cheer them on in the team’s annual Play4Kay game to support the Kay Yow Foundation’s fight against cancers that affect women.
After running out to a 24-point lead over the first 7:30 of the game, the Columbia women surprisingly found themselves in a battle with Cornell on Thursday night. In a typically intense physical battle between the Empire State rivals, the Lions used the offense of Kitty Henderson and the rebounding of Kaitlyn Davis to come away with a 57-46 victory at Levien Gymnasium.
With the win, the Light Blue are 3-0 in league play (12-0 overall) for the first time in program history and remain tied with Princeton for first place. For the Red, the defeat was their first of the year when holding an opponent to 60 points or less and they are now 1-3 in the conference (6-9 overall).
Columbia’s Carly Rivera, held scoreless through regulation, hit three straight triples late in the second overtime to help the Lions break away from Georgetown and secure a hard-fought 66-56 victory Sunday.
With the win, the Light Blue move to 5-0 for the first time in program history.
Announcers and writers around the nation focused a lot of attention to the 600-plus days between games for the Ivy League. While many expected the teams to be a bit rusty out of the gates, the Ancient Eight acquitted itself quite well in the season’s first week.
Thirteen of the league’s 16 teams had at least one win, with the Princeton and Columbia women notching three victories each. The Brown men almost upset No. 19 UNC without their top player, and the Princeton men just missed out on winning the Asheville Championship.
Check out some of the highlights from a very successful and welcome week of Ivy hoops:
The NCAA’s new, long awaited policy of allowing players to use their name, image and likeness for commercial profit extends to the Ivy League, which says it has adjusted rules to allow players to take part in NIL activity.
Former Columbia Lions Tai Bibbs and Randy Brumant quickly signed a deal to advertise for GCDC, a Washington, D.C. grilled cheese bar, per Dafter having transferred from Morningside Heights to Howard to join former Columbia assistant coach Kenny Blakeney.