Aeropostale: Mall-based specialty retailer of casual apparel for young people.
JIC you were wondering who the Tourney sponsor was. I thought it must be an airplane company. So it does pay to look.
But how much should we have to look at a mid-level Ivy League team? Sure they can SAT us to death. Prolly go on to bigger better things and get good seats to some futuristic VT vs. Columbia game. But can Columbia do anything about winning? I’ll put it to you this way; I’d have to favor Longwood to beat Columbia; but not by much.
#73 RPI Virginia Tech at NYC vs. #269 RPI Columbia
Columbia at a glance:
- The Columbia Lions are not a bad defensive team, they are 103rd in Scoring Defense and 95th in FG% allowed. Though do be fully awares the always snailish pace of Ivy League play skews this in Columbia’s favor.
- Quality back-up Forward Brian Grimes is out for the year with a knee injury. God Bless on that; but frontcourt depth is not a synonym for Columbia hoops to begin with.
- Somewhat surprisingly; Columbia has impoverished backcourt play. Few assists, more turnovers and suspect shooting from distance. Ivy teams typically have erudite G’s; but not so much for these Lions who also commit a ton of personal-fouls.
- Columbia dresses 17 ballers per game! Ivy League funding does not suck, but why not buy a different jersey for Mr. Max Craig and Mr. Aseno Ampin, as they both wear the single “0”?
Columbia has a fairly deep rotation as these Lions routinely run between 9-10 ballers at you. #5 Patty Foley is clearly the king of the jungle when it comes to scoring for Columbia, as he routinely puts up 42% more points per game than anyone else does for Columbia; even though Mr. Foley only nets 13 and change himself. He has managed to shake off pesky shooting shoulder ills this season that have plagued him his whole career. That should give you a heavy hint that Columbia does not score a whole lot; and low and behold these Lions only rate at 291st best in Scoring Offense with 60 points per game. Columbia may however have the best pure 3-point shooter we’ve seen so far this season in 2-guard K.J. Matsui who is only shooting 49% on the year from downtown!
Columbia does have a couple of curiously springy Forwards in Mr. Asenso Ampim and Mr. Jason Miller. They do pretty nice board work to be just a little bit big by Ivy League standards.
Miller can sky and Ampim can bang. Columbia even has a token 7` project baller from Falls Church VA in one Mr. Zack Crimmins who Seth Greenberg and Virginia Tech did not even bother to attempt to recruit though france, Notre Dame and Saint Joe’s did at least give Zack a hoops sniff. Odd huh? Dude is not really muscular; but the hoops Gentry can fix that.
However and nonetheless; Columbia is about exactly what you’d expect. Unathletic, small (other than Zack and fellow 6`12“ project Max Craig) and basically ungood. Our G’s should penetrate at will on Columbia, and “shortie” Thorns should have a field day. That is if “shortie” can play (leg injury). Normally I call for pounding the rock inside vs. the little guy(s) but this is one small conference team that we really simply should just blow right on by with our backcourt.
 Loading ... |
The other thing is to partition our minutes according to our approximately 24 hour turnaround. I want to see the VT scrubs in there in the first half which will allow us to do all we can to save
our starters and our top-8 rotation legs for a now fully revamped 8-1 and Tourney host Saint John’s, as I have to favor the Red Storm to beat the 3-6 Red Foxes (insert Grady and Lamont humor here) of Marist who are pretty lame right about now. This may not be a Bill Wennington and C.Mullen famous sweater wearing redux; but this is the best Saint John’s team in several years. Virginia Tech=74 Columbia=57
b’street