By: Matt Sugam, contributions from GoColumbiaLions.com
NEW YORK — Columbia women's basketball scored its most points in a 40-minute game in program history and cruised to a dominant, 103-54, victory over visiting Marist Thursday night on Schiller Court at Levien Gymnasium.
Columbia (6-2) hit the century mark for the first time since 2016 and scored the second-most points in a game -- it was second only to a, 114-111, quadruple overtime win against Penn in 1988. In doing so, the Lions shot 62.5 percent (40-64) from the field, which ranks No. 3 in its single-game history books.
"One thing that was a lot of fun about tonight was that we got to kind of restart our home season," head coach
Megan Griffith '07CC said. "That was something we talked a lot about … I kind of feel like a proud mom at this point. It's just exciting to see them put it together."
Paige Lauder and
Abbey Hsu scored a game-high 24 points apiece. For Lauder, it bested her previous career-high of 10 that she matched last weekend down in Miami. More impressively, she went 9-of-11 from the field, 5-of-6 from deep and scored her 24 points in under 13 minutes. According
to research on HerHoopStats, it makes Lauder the first player in NCAA women's basketball this season to score at least that many in fewer than 15 minutes.
"Shout-out to my teammates for finding me and getting me the ball," Lauder said. "I think that's a great thing about our team. Any day, someone else can step up and we're clearly a very deep team. I think that makes us very hard to defend."
After a pregame ceremony that included a commemorative basketball for scoring her 1,000th point last weekend, Hsu was 10-of-13 from the field, including 4-of-6 from 3-point land.
The Lions had a couple shots rim in and out before getting things going in the first quarter and jumping out to a 23-11 lead. By halftime, Columbia was up 54-23 while shooting at a 65.6 percent clip, including 53.8 percent from beyond the arc.
"We take a lot of threes in practice and that is something that we pride ourselves on," Lauder added. "One of our goals going into games is getting up a certain number of threes up … We showed early we can hit it."
The Lions shared the basketball with 18 assists in the half and 27 for the game, which is also a new top-10 mark in the record books.
Kitty Henderson had a career-high eight assists and four steals to go along with eight points.
Kaitlyn Davis had a team-high nine rebounds with five assists, two steals, a block and eight points.
Columbia led 85-42 at the end of the third quarter. The final score was the largest lead. A vast difference from last year, where the Lions would let teams hang around during their historic season, rather than put them away.
"Last year, sometimes we struggled with putting away teams and this was a big growth step for us in just becoming a more mature team. We're able to lock in from start to finish for all 40 minutes,"
Jaida Patrick said. "And I think that's something we have really improved on this season."
After playing six of its first seven games on the road, Thursday was the front end of back-to-back home games for Columbia. The Lions host Lafayette on Saturday at 1 p.m. on Schiller Court at Levien Gymnasium. Tickets can be
purchased here. The game also airs on
ESPN+.
"I was really proud of our girls for dictating the tempo and pace on both sides of the floor and putting together a really good offensive effort," Griffith said. "I think there's some ground to make up on our defensive effort, but we'll fix that and be ready for Saturday."
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Matt Sugam '23 SPS has been covering sports in the NYC Metropolitan area for over a decade. He has spent the last eight years covering college and professional sports as a stringer for the Associated Press and contributing to The New York Times, USA Today Network, NJ.com, and SNY.tv. He's been covering Lions Athletics for gocolumbialions.com while pursuing an M.S. in Strategic Communication at Columbia's School of Professional Studies. Follow him on Twitter @MattSugam or visit his website at
www.mattsugam.com
