Author:
An Observer
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Date Posted: 12:07:01 02/03/25 Mon
Having watched most of the Lionesses' (not sure if that's the best possessive form of the Columbia team) games, I think that this season marks an important milestone.
For the first time ever, the Columbia women's basketball team is the best in the conference.
Sure, the Lady Lions won a co-championship in each of the last two seasons. But in both cases, I think that Princeton was the better team, slightly but very clearly. And the Tigers proved it in the ILT, emphatically.
It's always dangerous to take the results of the first half of our annual round robin and simply double them as a projection for the full season. But I predict that Columbia will finish the regular season 14-0. They've already won at Princeton and Harvard, their two greatest challenges on the schedule. When the Tigers and Crimson come calling to Levien, the place will be rocking, both because the perfect conference regular season will be at stake and because the women stand in such sharp contrast to the men.
Ah, the men.
After Columbia upset Villanova on the Main Line and perhaps breathing the heady fumes of the football team's tri-championship, some prognosticators thought that the Lions were due to turn the corner.
At the time, I posted that returning five starters from a team which finished 4-10, to me, forecasts another 4-10 campaign. Another year of experience doesn't mean much when the players just aren't that good.
I said then that it's better to look to a team which lost outstanding talent because the junior players stepping up are like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're going to get.
And that's exactly what's happened up in New Haven. Danny Wolf decamped for Ann Arbor and, as it turned out, he was keeping a pretty good player from getting minutes last year.
Yale's now reloading, not rebuilding.
I think Yale's got a pretty good shot at 14-0. They've already won at Jadwin, which is the biggest speed bump on their schedule.
We're only halfway done, but I think the future is pretty clear. On the women's side, the Columbia Lions will win their first outright championship ever. The field will be Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and Brown.
On the men's side, Yale will continue at the top of the pecking order, fending off a challenge from a disappointing Tiger squad. The field will be Yale, Cornell, Princeton and a fourth team to be named.
7/8 of the two fields are set.
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