Men travel to play Cal (#76 Ken Pom) on 12/21. I believe Cal is 10-1 and beat UCLA. In recent years we have played 2 tough money games and this is the second of those this year. I expect the team to really compete and battle hard. Cornell upset Cal out there last year so hopefully we can do the same. It’s also the first time in quite awhile that the men have gotten on an airplane. Go Lions!
We are supposed to lose by 8. I would be surprised if we kept it that close, and despite Kenpom’s prediction of a 22% chance, stunned if we actually won.
Agree. I thought line would be 12-13 maybe and even keeping it that close would take a good effort.
Northwestern State, which Kenpom ranks very low, stayed close to UCal a few days ago. However, UCal’s star player Scotty Pippen’s son, did not play against Northwestern State.
Looks like Nweke is back after missing the Stony Brook game. He’s provided good minutes, especially In Bedri’s absence.
That is one tough team. Columbia got down pretty early and was never really able to completely dig itself out of that hole.
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Agree. Cal is a good team. Slow start that we could never recover from. They bottled up Noland and similar to the Stony Brook game not having our second scorer hurt. We also turned it over too much in the first half and they got to the line a lot. One bright spot was our defense was stout in the first half.
I watched on delay and I agree with you. Cal was a notch above what they have seen in length, speed, and athleticism, especially but not solely on defense. The Lions tied them in rebounds, and held them 10 points below their scoring average, but this was more than negated by their own inability to score.
Columbia played very hard. On the extremes in terms of the performances, Soulis who has been playing well totally disappeared against their Bigs. Connor Igoe OTOH was a revelation, going 16/4 in 21 minutes, much of it on solo work underneath. He was just tabbed IL Rookie of the Week.
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When one of their guards, the shortest guy on the court, rambled down the lane for that powerhouse facial dunk, that was basically a statement that it was a men vs boys kind of game.
Very impressive play. That said, I counted 5 Columbia dunks.
I thought our guys put up a great fight against an outstanding basketball team. Cal has some NBA caliber athletes who made life miserable for our guys on defense for about half the game. However, our players did not embarrass themselves at all and seemed to be learning from their experience throughout the game. The post-game press conference was interesting. Two terrific young coaches!
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