The men are roughly 12 pt favorites at home tonight. UMass Lowell has been moderately successful in recent years but trending downward. They won 26, 22 and 17 games over last 3 seasons. They lost to UConn by 60 and New Haven by 6. Will be interesting to see who replaces Avery in the starting lineup. I assume it’s O’Keefe or Franklin. Franklin has been our best player so far, but it might be wise to keep bringing him off the bench. Why change something that works? O’Keefe seems to be working his way back to full strength and I expect him to breakout soon.
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Based upon how Brown’s absence was managed during the Connecticut game, I would expect the Lions to replace him at the point with Kenny Noland and/or Hampton Sanders. O’Keefe and Franklin are likely be rotated at the other guard position, One interesting 3-guard option would be to have Noland, Franklin and O’Keefe on the floor together.
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Good observation. I agree that the 3 guard option is something we will see. My best guess is this:
1 Kenny
2 O’Keefe
3 Blair
4 Bedri
5 Mason
Kenny and O’Keefe are interchangeable. Miles comes in as 2 or 3, Sanders comes in as 1 and Soulis is the 1st big guy off the bench. Something like that.
Franklin starts!
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Kevin Hovde looking a lot like Jim Engles out there. 14 turnovers in the first half against UMass Lowell??? That’s absurd. Lowell lost to UConn by more than 60 and got beat at home by New Haven. They are terrible and making Columbia look even worse…so far.
Really poor first 10 min
Well, the second half was much better! Mason Ritter is a star on the glass. Bedri needs to clean up the turnovers but has great footwork. Good to see them respond.
3 games in and you’re already on Hovde. Maybe go back to the old board?
Best coached Columbia Men’s Basketball game in more than a decade! It took our new Head Basketball Coach Kevin Hovde, took a bit more than twenty minutes of actual game time to get rid of the stink the last coach left behind. No wonder Sad Columbia fan is upset.
Shotout to Conor Igoe too, his game today was super selfless and played really tough.
Sidenote: I was in the game and noticed something really cool. Coach Hovde has someone on the bench looking at the game live on a tablet and they were able to successfully challenge two bad out-of-bounds calls by re-watching the play immediately. First time I see a team taking advantage of the new rule so thoughtfully. We are probably going to start seeing this more and more from other teams.
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What old board? I literally just said I didn’t like the way they played in the first half (it was bad…14 turnovers is really bad), and immediately gave them credit for playing MUCH better in the second half. Feel like airing reasonable opinions is the whole point of a fan message board! And yes, I’ve been watching every one of Columbia games for years and years, and that was a great second half. Hopefully they beat old friend Joe Jones next week.
“Kevin Hovde is looking a lot like Jim Engles out there”. 100 minutes into his career, playing without the senior point guard who has started all but one game for the last 3 years. Nobody cares about your shallow box score analysis.
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I wonder if that will be the lineup while Avery is out. Miles never got going last night. He’s very talented and brings a tough competitiveness that rubs off. I thought O’Keefe and Sanders played very well.
I think Noland O’Keefe is the way to go, too many threads for the opponent to take care off.
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Just wondering if I am the only Columbia basketball fan who finds our announcer to be extremely annoying–very high pitched voice—constantly screaming–talks in non-stop cliches throughout every game–Columbia had two great announcers during the Kyle Smith Era, what happened to them?
Are you referring to Lance Medow, who does TV for basketball and football? If so, I agree that he’s not great.
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Yes, Lance Medow a/k/a the “King of Cliches,” is the tv play by play announcer in question. To avoid headaches I usually need to turn the sound off when he is broadcasting Columbia Football and Basketball games.
He’s not great. I watched the football game and now the women’s game and he has been on both. He’s a good reason to go to the game.
Many would say individuals, who conveniently hide behind screens so they can talk a lot of crap on a message board of all places, probably still live in their mother’s basements and should be medicated and grow up. What a shame lion599 and Columbia8 must have already been taken.