Recruiting Opportunity?
Patchogue-Medford, home of the Raiders
I have NO IDEA what this young man's grades are, but there could be an overlooked lineman prospect for Columbia to check out from Long Island.
Jordany Diejuste was named the best lineman, (he played tackle on offense and defense), on Suffolk County, but he's only been recruited by Marist and Stony Brook because he missed his junior year with an injury.
Basketball Jones
It was a nice win for the Lions mens basketball squad last night at Wagner, the same team that had already beaten Yale and Brown this season. Player of the Year contender John Baumann had 29 points.
Please Weigh In
And I'M STILL taking your nominations for the following 2007 Columbia Football team awards. Thanks to all of you who have already made your choices in the comments section.
posted by Jake @ 6:37:00 PM
9 comments
9 Comments:
It was much, much better last night, in an away game, against a pretty good Wagner team which had already beaten two Ivies. (Though a Wagner team which also sports an aggrieved bonehead who was apparently personally responsible for not one but two! technical fouls.)
Columbia had a lead at the half, and even when Wagner came roaring back after the break with a very physical full-court press (which it dropped somewhere around the fourteenth minute for some weird reason), the Lions kept their poise. And Baumann was simply terrific, kept his own cool despite some very obvious fouling and some comparably bad officiating.
It does seem, however, as the four "old guys" Wagner fans behind me (who got a big laugh out of my telling me that their team had beaten Joe Jones's brother's team only Saturday night) kept noting, that Bret LoScalzo really is the only Lion capable of moving the ball up court. That could be a problem in Ivy play.
Still, they played and shot well last night. They put it all together and looked very good against a team likely to challenge hard for its own league championship, and they deserve due recognition for it.
rs
Any word on Foley? Does Big Ben still look out of shape?
I have seen a lot of CU basketball games and NEVER saw such a home town set of officials.
Wagner stopped the press for two reasons. CU was getting thru it better than other presses where we looked lousy. AND, Wagner was tired. ( Hands on the knees ,holding the shorts and heads bent forward.)
My compliments to Coach Joe Jones as he seemed to have fired up the guys to play at an Ivy Championship caliber level against a strong Wagner squad. We have one great player in John Baumann and several very good players who have been underachieving until last night when they did everything right against a strong Wagner squad. Mack Montgomery scored 13 points, Justin Armstrong scored 12 points and K.J. Matsui hit several clutch threes. Most important, Mack and Justin pounded the boards which wore out Wagner. Mack and Justin must feel good today. Great Work Guys! Stay Tough!!!
In answer to a question, in my own opinion "Big Ben" looked neither great nor lousy out there on the court. He just wasn't much of a factor. I don't know, he seems to hang back where scrappier sorts like Baumann and Montgomery just jump right in. He's there but not exactly fully engaged.
Yes, the officiating was bad. But I don't think it's too much better even at Columbia home games. What was most impressive to me was the doggedness of Jones' team, and that they cut through the press of a pretty good, very muscled Seahawks team. It was a very physical game, played at top-speed for almost 40 minutes. I wonder now if that's just what Columbia needs to face during its upcoming Ivy season?
It was also a nasty, profane Wagner crowd. The frat rats in the end stands started booing right from Columbia's pre-game shoot-around, and they never let up. Some of these would-be (is that right? no, they probably do qualify already) lager louts even jeered obscenely DURING the National Anthem. Such class, no?
rs
Was it any worse than the Palestra? Ass for Big Ben, I just don't get it. He should be tearing apart the competition at this level. When I have seen him, he has looked winded and out of shape. We have seen aglimpse of his potential, but it's really now or never. I know that he is a n outstanding student headed to med school, but he really owes it to himself and to his team to start throwing his body around.
Well, I don't see how the game refs could have been homies, when we won the game - by such a large margin. They gave a technical foul to the Wagner coach as well!
Interesting about the profane crowd - I felt the same way attending the St. John's game last season - plenty of cussing going on; when you are there with small kids - and it is mentioned in the program - I don't really like it. It reminded me of Rangers - Mets - Yankees crowds. Which are fine, but not really appropriate in a college setting. However, we know that colleges are trying to address this issue. The Rutgers fans ragging on Navy football players comes to mind as a bad example of college fan misconduct.
On the other hand, college students in general like to cuss - I'm sure I did it as well.
We also have to consider that Ivy league fans are pretty subdued in general; if you go to Wagner, you can expect a very different venue.
I think we should expect Ben to still be an enormous threat - for god's sake!
On a football note, Wiley has been hired as yet another ex NFLer to the ESPN anayst crew. He gave decent props to CU football today on the Mike n Mike show and his story(although not entirely true concerning him being recruited by Cal and UCLA out of hs-he was 185 lbs in hs and it was only when he was asked to take semester off at CU and trained in Calli and ballooned up to 265 did that happen-a friend of mine was instrumental in mentoring him and getting him to stay at CU and finish out). Anyway he does a great job and I would think he could be a valuable recruiting resource through his exposure going forward.
If you think Waner was bad, Fordham in the 60s was trerrible. We had some great Jewish players like Felsinger, Newmark, Farber, Gordon and others, and when we went to Rose Hill the anti Semitism was like Nazi Germany in the 1930s. When we first started playing great black players with Jimmy Mac and others, Fordham was awful and frankly Princeton was also pretty bad in those days. So today we just have thugs; in those days we had bigots and worse.
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