Tag: Kyle Smith

Columbia falls in final minutes to American

Columbia's Mark Cisco makes his move.

For the second game in a row Columbia had an opponent right where it wanted them. The Lions were up four on American with 6:17 to play, but let the lead slip away and the Eagles pulled out a 66-58 victory at Levien Gymnasium on Saturday night.

American closed on an 18-6 run over the final six minutes of the game.

“We’ve got to study it some,” said Columbia head coach Kyle Smith. “We’ve got to put ourselves in more of those situations in practice. We’ve got guys that haven’t been in those situations at all. There’s really nothing like game experience, but at the same time we have to look at what we can do coaching wise.”

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Three Questions – Columbia

As the season approaches every team has questions. This series is going to look at three key ones.

1. Can Columbia break into the top half of the Ivy League? – Last season the Lions tied for 5th in the Ivy League at 6-8. Most of that team returns, but Columbia was still picked 7th in the league by the media in the preseason. Nobody is particularly high on the Lions. In order to move up, the offense is going to have to be better in league play. Which brings me to question #2.

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Value add likes Columbia’s offense

Is it possible that after finishing right around .500 last season, and 6-8 in league play, Columbia might be a team that’s ready to make the leap in the Ivy League? Well, the one metric that seems to support that theory is offense “value add.” (For more background on the stat see this post and Cracked Sidewalks.)

A break down the Ivy League’s returnees through the lens of the statistic suggests that Harvard is going to run away with league crown. The Crimson combined for a very solid overall number of 15.1% value added when you add up all the individual contributions. I haven’t run the numbers for every school, but I bet that’s high even amongst BCS teams. That’s just another reason to watch out for Harvard next season. But it was the second rated team in the Ivy League, Columbia, that really stood out when I looked at the numbers.

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Maybe a 16 over 1 in the Fashion Brackets?

It’s April and the NCAA Tournament is over. Thus everyone is scrambling to put together some ridiculous bracket so that they can grab the attention of fans still craving simple one-and-done eliminations.

At CollegeInsider.com they’re capitalizing on it by putting out the Runway to the Fashion 4 bracket. It’s even got a blog where Virginia Tech’s Seth Greenberg can be found spouting some insider knowledge. (At least his team made this bracket!)

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