COLUMBIA
Last Year's Record: 24-10
Last Game: season opener
Last Meeting: Stony Brook, 69-60, 1/2/16
Notable Returnees:
6-10 sr F Luke Petrasek 10.0 ppg, 4.4 rpg, 1.2 bpg, .504 FG%, .792 FT%, .454 3-pt FG%
6-8 sr F Jeff Coby 5.4 ppg, 4.5 rpg
6-4 jr G Kyle Castlin 4.8 ppg
6-8 jr F Lukas Meisner 4.2 ppg, 3.3 rpg, .397 3-pt FG%
And we're off! Very excited to get the season going.
Columbia lost four starters from a team that won the CIT title, and that spelled the end for its coach, Kyle Smith, who took the job at San Francisco. So like us, Columbia has a new leader – Jim Engles, who spent the past eight seasons at NJIT. He was an assistant at Columbia from 2003-2008 before taking the NJIT gig.
The Lions were picked to finish fifth out of eight teams in the Ivy, this despite returning just one starter. Petrasek's an island kid (East Northport) and was a factor for them against us last season. Meisner and Coby came on strong, with Meisner putting up 11 and 10 against NJIT in the CIT semis, and Coby posting a 14 and 10 night in the final against UC Irvine. So although the lion's share of their scoring is gone and we're talking about a couple games, perhaps the cupboards aren't bare. By comparison, our guys have zero double-doubles, at least at SBU. Woodhouse had three at Longwood, and I'm guessing Saintel had a fair share of them in juco.
From last year's game, we have 13 of our 69 points back (Sekunda 7, Woodhouse 4, Nyama 3). Columbia has 34 of its 60, with six players led by Petrasek's 11.
For me, this game, and this season, will depend a lot on how well we fare on the glass without Warney. I think we'll shoot the ball OK, but can we get and prevent second-chance opportunities?
I'm hoping you all are correct about Yeboah being a major factor for us. We need a couple of these newcomers to emerge because there isn't enough juice among the returnees for the noobs to sit back and watch this year.