Men's basketball readies for Ivy foes Columbia, Cornell

With the men's basketball team's first game of two against Penn coming up on Tuesday, it can be tough to focus on the present. But that is exactly what John Thompson's '88 squad will have to do when it travels to New York this weekend to take on Columbia and Cornell.

Even though the Lions (2-15 overall, 0-4 Ivy League) and the Big Red (7-10 overall, 2-2 Ivy League) have not played particularly strong basketball this year, both teams gave Princeton (8-7, 2-0) trouble when they each hosted the Tigers last year.

Princeton staved off Cornell 61-57 in Ithaca and topped Columbia 49-48 at Levien Gym.

The Tigers have already played two very close games against Harvard and Dartmouth, pulling out late wins in both. Last Friday, the team stood tall, notching a six-point win against the Crimson after being down 61-60 with less than two minutes remaining.

The following night, Princeton downed a pesky Green Wave team 57-52, preventing what would have been one of the biggest upsets in recent Ivy League history.

With those two wins, however, the Tigers have now won four straight games overall, and stand at 8-7, the first time the team has been over the .500 mark since it was 3-2 in the middle of December.

Friday Princeton will take on a Lion team that is headed in the exact opposite direction. Columbia has lost eight straight games, including four conference matchups. In fact, the team's only two wins this year have come against Army and the University of Texas-El Paso.. Already this year the Lions have scored fewer than 40 points in a game three times. Against Cornell they netted 38, 37 against Boston University and a meager 36 against Rutgers.

That kind of offensive output could spell serious trouble for Columbia, as Princeton boasts one of the nation's best scoring defenses year in and year out. The Tigers have held their opponents under 60 points in seven of the team's games.

For frame of reference, the nation's leading scoring defense generally yields 55 or so points per game.

Columbia's one bright spot so far this season has been the play of six-foot, four-inch senior forward Marco McCottrey. McCottrey is averaging 9.2 points per game and 7.6 rebounds per contest, on a team that scores fewer than 50 points and pulls down just 30 rebounds on a nightly basis.

Cornell, meanwhile, has had a decent season with a couple quality wins including one over Lafayette. Yet the Big Red has several poor losses, and both of its conference wins came against Cornell.

The Big Red is led by guard Ka'Ron Barnes and forward Lenny Collins. Against Yale last weekend, Barnes led the team in scoring while Collins dumped in eight to go along with his nine rebounds.

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While the Tigers are playing Friday in the city and Saturday in the western part of New York, the Quakers will have the reverse schedule, playing Cornell first and then the Lions.

Both Penn and Princeton have 2-0 league marks and if both come out of this weekend without a blemish on their records, Tuesday's matchup at the Palestra could be for sole possession of first in the Ancient Eight. Brown is currently leading the league with a 4-0 record, while Harvard and Yale are tied with Cornell at 2-2.

Last season, Yale finished in a three-way tie with Princeton and Penn for the league title.

Tuesday's game will be the first time the Tigers and Quakers have met since Penn drubbed Princeton in last year's regular season finale. The two teams failed to meet in the three-team playoff last year when Yale beat the Tigers for the right to play Penn. The Quakers won the game to make the NCAA tournament.