Really needed that one. Probably our best performance of the year so far.
It started with the defense. Eisendrath did a great job forcing Noland into tough shots, overplaying him to his left, especially on ball screens, to keep Columbia out of the pick and roll action they wanted to get into. Seemed like we knew their sets very, very well, and they never really adjusted. Those early stops helped us get some early runouts, and the offense never looked back either.
Hinton set the tone early with a couple of drives—and even a three!—and Batties took the baton from about the 10 minute mark of the first half on. The Columbia bigs had no hope against him. They weren’t comfortable guarding him out on the perimeter, not to mention the way their over-aggressive defense on ball screens gave him wide open threes on pick and pops.
Pretty impressive that we could score this well with Hunt giving us zero; it helped that Eisendrath had one of his best, most opportunistic offensive games all year.
Just need to carry this defensive intensity forward to next week. That’s the key.