For a moment, it seemed as if the sporting fates had conspired to gift the Columbia seniors just a few more unexpected minutes of college basketball. And, of all places, they would spend those few minutes on the hallowed court at the Mecca of the Ivy League game, the Palestra in Philadelphia.
Saturday night’s game was tied 67-67 with less than 15 seconds on the clock when Penn’s Tyler Bernardini aired his effort short, prompting a scramble in the paint. Overtime rushed ever closer. But when Bernardini re-emerged with the ball and enough composure to hook his desperate shot into the basket, the Palestra exploded. Only six cruel tenths of a second were left on the clock.
And so the senior class of John Baumann, Ben Nwachukwu, Mack Montgomery, Brett Loscalzo, and Kashif Sweet trudged off the court for the last time, trying to make sense of the nerve-wracking 69-67 defeat. It was their second loss of the weekend after falling 75-64 in a dull game at Princeton on Friday night.
“During that last play I almost wanted us to go to overtime, just so I could have another half of basketball,” Nwachukwu said.
The defeat capped a three-game skid, leaving a bitter end to the second consecutive 7-7 Ivy season for the Lions. Their record was good enough for fourth place in the final standings, matching the media poll’s preseason prediction, but many will look to those three losses as games that could have easily gone in Columbia’s favor. Dartmouth, who beat Columbia at Levien Gymnasium on March 1, and Princeton were two of the league’s weakest sides, while the Lions had a 6-point lead against Penn in the second half.
“Obviously, I’m feeling mixed emotions right now,” Baumann said after the Penn game. “It’s tough to lose a game like that, but you have to put things in perspective. It’s really encouraging to come back to the locker room and know that the guys who are still here are going to continue to improve.”
With 21 points against Princeton and another 17 against Penn, Baumann used the final weekend of conference play to make a strong case for the Ivy League Player of the Year award. Nwachukwu, who has played up front with Baumann for four years, was equally impressive against Penn, picking up 23 points and nine rebounds.
On Friday night, however, everyone started slowly and the Lions were caught on their back foot by an unexpected inclusion in the Tigers’ lineup, senior Zach Woolridge making his first-ever collegiate start. Playing like someone who had started every game of every season, he flew out of the blocks and had 15 points by halftime, when Princeton led 38-30.
“I’d be a bad coach if I didn’t acknowledge the effort that he’s given,” Princeton head coach Sydney Johnson said of Woolridge. “Thankfully, tonight he played and he looked terrific. He made me look like John Wooden, and I’m not.”
In the second half, Princeton had another ace in the hole in Kareem Maddox. He came off the bench to score 18 points and dominate the paint in just 17 minutes of action.
“Those two guys were very athletic, very quick, and I think they really surprised our players,” Columbia head coach Joe Jones said.
Still, it was Noah Savage who paced the Tigers with 18 points. He was one of four Princeton players in double digits.
After shooting a remarkable 61 percent in the first half, Princeton cooled off after the break but did enough on defense to stifle any run Columbia tried to put together. And it was more of the same at the Palestra the following night.
Against Penn, the Lions were never able to put together a string of stops on defense that prevented them from leading by more than seven points. After a timeout with 5:01 left in the game, the Quakers went about erasing the Lions’ advantage with a pair of free throws by Bernardini, a jumper from Grandieri and four more free throws from Andreas Schreiber— this in spite of a Niko Scott jumper at the other end.
Schreiber then made a layup to give Penn the lead, and that’s when Bernardini took over, ending six collegiate careers with the narrowest of defeats.