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Columbia graduate transfer Patrick Tapé is headed for Duke.
Tapé will be immediately eligible after sitting out this season, as his loss proved a significant blow for the Lions. Tapé averaged 6.9 points and 5.1 rebounds per game in three seasons for Columbia, establishing himself as a strong inside presence and efficient scorer. He was an All-Ivy honorable mention as a junior in 2018-19, averaging 11.3 points and 5.9 rebounds per contest.
The 6-foot-10, 220-pound Charlotte, N.C. native was in the top 10 of ESPN’s graduate transfer rankings and told ESPN that choosing Duke over Syracuse, USC and Ohio State came down to proximity.
“[It was] really just being close to home and having my family come see me, the excellent tradition they have there and the opportunity to play for the best coach of all time,” Tapé said.
Tapé’s decision was the inverse of Harvard graduate transfer Seth Towns’s decision to commit to Ohio State over Duke.
Seth Towns is taking his talents back to Columbus.
The former Harvard forward and 2017-18 Ivy League Player of the Year announced Saturday night that he was committing to Ohio State as a graduate transfer.
A Columbus native, Towns noted his gratitude for his time with Harvard basketball, which consisted of two seasons in which he averaged 14.2 points and five rebounds. The 6-foot-7, 215-pound standout earned Ivy POY honors as a sophomore before suffering an injury down the stretch of the 2018 Ivy League Tournament final, an eventual loss to Penn at the Palestra.
Jack Forrest, one of few rays of hope for Columbia during its long slog to a 6-24 record this season (1-13 in Ivy play), is transferring, Verbal Commits reported Saturday.
Forrest averaged 8.9 points and 3.3 rebounds per game in his rookie campaign, including a season-high 23 points in Columbia’s lone conference win in the Ivy opener against Cornell.
Losing Forrest would be a blow to the Lions, marking yet another loss of talent transferring away from the program. Patrick Tapé opted to become a graduate transfer before the 2019-20 season following his junior campaign, a year after Jaron Faulds and Myles Hanson left the program. Mike Smith and Jake Killingsworth have also entered the transfer portal, the Columbia Spectator noted, as both lost seasons due to injury and cannot play as graduate students per Ivy League rules. That means Columbia’s first, third and fourth-leading scorers from this season will be unavailable next season, although last season’s leading scorer Gabe Stefanini lost the 2019-20 season due to injury and is expected to return in 2020-21.
It’s Thanksgiving, which means it’s time to take stock of what followers of each Ivy men’s team should be thankful for at this point of the season:
Columbia sits 1-2 after its first three games, notching its first win of the season in the home opener against Binghamton. A tumultuous preseason saw the team lose Gabe Stefanini (foot) for several months and Patrick Tapé (intention to graduate transfer) for the season. At Wake Forest, Columbia saw a late four-point lead dissipate and disappear for the team’s second consecutive 65-63 loss. In the home opener, however, the Lions comfortably topped Binghamton 75-63 for their first tally of the season in the win column.
What’s been driving Columbia’s competitive start to the season?
A respectable .500 winning percentage in the Ivy League, buoyed overall by solid nonconference wins. A close game at Harvard in early March, in the thick of the title race. Yale, conference champions, with Harvard the runner-up and Columbia not far behind. Sound plausible?
It was more than plausible in 1901-02, the Ivy League’s first basketball season, which began shortly after Harvard topped Yale for the year’s football title (a “fitting climax to a season of surprizes,” as the Daily Princetonian put it). Only 10 years after James Naismith cast a ball into the first stationary peach basket, Columbia began its varsity intercollegiate basketball competition. The Lions are still going strong even after the addition of three “new” teams to the conference since its inception.
Going into year 119, here’s everything you need to know about the Columbia Lions men’s basketball team heading into the season.
Fans of Columbia basketball may have been concerned by the omission of Patrick Tape, a 2019 honorable mention All-Ivy power forward, from Tuesday’s Road to Ivy Madness season preview. By Thursday afternoon, they would have their suspicions increased when Stadium’s Jeff Goodman tweeted that a source informed him that Tape would leave the program, graduate this spring and seek a graduate transfer next year.
Despite being in the team photograph, Tape’s name had been removed from the 2019-20 roster.
Ivy Hoops Online reported Monday that Dartmouth guard Brendan Barry would miss the 2019-20 season due to injury. The Ancient Eight suffered its second major hit of the week Thursday when news broke that Columbia’s Gabe Stefanini injured his left foot and would be having surgery on Friday. Columbia Athletics confirmed the news to IHO later in the day.
Unlike with Barry’s injury, it is unclear how much time Stefanini will miss.
There is no official timetable for Stefanini’s return, but Basketball NCAA editor Riccardo De Angelis, places it at three to five months. If the timetable is correct and the junior guard’s recovery goes optimally well, he could return in time for the end of the Lions’ nonconference schedule against Maine on January 2 and Mount St. Vincent on the 9th to get ready for the Ivy opener at home against Cornell on the 18th.