Clearly we are in a rebuilding year with young players, but that’s true for a few teams around the league. If Brown hopes to compete at all for top half, this weekend’s home games now seem like must-wins.
The defense has looked good at times, and Jenkins/Dabo have played well. Questions mark around Lewis is huge. Have not seen any concrete info as to why he sat out Saturday. Also curious what happened to Loughlin, who had added three-point shooting off the bench.
Wasn’t expecting them to win the league, but 0-4 with three home losses probably wraps up this season from a competitive standpoint, anyway. Barring significant injury news, I remain optimistic.
Loughlin was hurt in the Providence game. Since that was a month ago, it can’t be a minor injury. Any loss of Lewis is huge – let’s hope he’s able to get back on the court this week.
Two significant tests of our defensive capacities this weekend. We will really need Lewis against Columbia, as the Lions have a ton of size in their front court and on the wings. Without him, I don’t love our chances.
The Cornell game will be interesting. The Big Red haven’t been able to defend anyone to this point in conference play, but their offense is as efficient as ever. The backcourt of Noard and Fiegen might be as good as any we’ll see in league play.
Speaking of injuries, I noticed that Drew Kania is back in street clothes. It’s a shame his career on College Hill was so severely curtailed by injuries. He looked like an exciting wing player coming out of high school.
In media availability yesterday, Mike said Lewis is “making progress and we are hopeful. But he’s not fully back yet.”
Could be gamesmanship, could be that Lewis will only play in one of the two games this weekend.
Lewis is listed as an expected starter. That may only be worth the pixels on which it is printed, and her certainly will not be back at full strength if he does play.
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If Landon isn’t at full strength (and I doubt he, or anyone else, is 100% at this point in the season), then I’d sure love to see what he looks when all systems are operating full bore. 26 points and 9 rebounds in 39 minutes, all while managing to avoid picking up his fifth foul down the stretch.
Great effort against a big, physical Columbia team.
With Clark back, Brown is back in the mix for the ILT.
Lewis can find his way without Clark.
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Haha, I got my Landons mixed up.
Amazing performance by Lewis. Since the December 9 game against Providence, he had played against Johnson & Wales and Yale in 5 weeks, and there were 14 days without practice mixed in, and he missed the Penn game with a concussion (as he said in the post-game interview). To play that well for 39 minutes against big, strong Columbia forwards is really impressive.
Also, give Mike Martin credit for changing the starting lineup. He’s clearly not afraid to tinker until he comes up with the combination of players who are performing best.
I wasn’t sure about taking AU out of his off-the-bench role, because I love the change in offensive energy when he comes in. But whatever was done today worked.
The win was remarkable in that we got pounded on the boards (Columbia had a whopping 17 offensive rebounds to 25 defensive for us) and shot 1-13 from three. Ball movement was great and MWJ and JJ dished it a ton.
JJ was huge and just missed a triple double. Lewis was absolutely enormous scoring the ball. AU found ways to contribute even when shots didn’t fall. Paragon played only six minutes but had six big points. And Langham played going downhill all game - every score was one heading to the basket.
And the best part was I got to watch it all sitting next to the venerable Old Bear.
They needed every bit of it. Columbia is a good team. This was a very good win for them.
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I can save you a seat for Cornell.
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Bruno and OldBear, I hope you were at least able to enjoy each other’s company today.