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Columbia University Athletics / Josh Wang
102
Winner Cornell CU 14-4,4-1 Ivy League
85
Columbia CU 6-14,1-4 Ivy League
Winner
Cornell CU
14-4,4-1 Ivy League
102
Final
85
Columbia CU
6-14,1-4 Ivy League
Score By Periods
Team 1 2 F
Cornell CU 42 60 102
Columbia CU 38 47 85

Game Recap: Men's Basketball | | Matt Sugam

Men's Basketball Downed By Cornell On Monday

Lions fight back in the first half before second half setback

NEW YORK - Geronimo Rubio De La Rosa had 12 points, Zine Eddine Bedri had 11 points and Kenny Noland added 10 points, six assists and three rebounds off the bench as Columbia fell to Cornell 102-85 on Schiller Court in Levien Gymnasium. 

The Lions opened the game with a 3-pointer from De La Rosa and jumped out to a 5-0 lead before Cornell had a layup to take its first lead at 11-10 with 14:06 left in the first half. While Columbia would tie it at 11, Cornell would score 14 unanswered to take a 25-11 lead midway through the first half.
 
Cornell would lead by as many as 17, but the Lions fought back. By halftime, Cornell only held a 42-38 advantage in the battle for the Empire State after first-year Avery Brown (9 points and four assists) hit a 3-pointer from just inside the midcourt line to beat the buzzer.

"19 points, 10 assists, six turnovers, so I think that's a pretty good game for two first-year point guards who have never experienced that before," coach Jim Engles said. "They did a good job responding and that's the type of growth that we're looking for. I thought they did a really good job of keeping everybody involved in playing our offense."

Unfortunately, the halftime score is the closest it would get. Cornell's (14-4, 4-1) lead would quickly balloon back to double digits. Columbia (6-14, 1-4) trailed by as many as 24.

"We just talked about our growth," Noland said of the message in the postgame locker room. "Each game we're trying to learn and improve. We have a lot of young guys."

Liam Murphy added eight points, four assists, and four rebounds while Jake Tavroff had 11 points and three rebounds as subs.

Engles was pleased with his first-year point guards' (Noland and Brown) progression four games into the Ivy League season.

After a tough weekend at Harvard and home against Cornell, Columbia will now hit the road and travel to Providence, RI to take on Brown on Saturday, January 21. The game is set to tip at 4 p.m. and will air on ESPN+.

"Road games are different," Engles said. "The physicality is different. Obviously, you're playing in a situation where the environment is going to be different. There's a lot of challenges that you have to experience, but I think all this stuff is new. This league is new for us.

"I thought there was a big improvement from our Harvard game to today's game, even though you didn't see the score or the result we wanted, I thought we did some better things."

Matt Sugam '23 SPS has been covering sports in the N.Y. 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 covering Lions Athletics for gocolumbialions.com while pursuing an M.S. in Strategic Communication at Columbia SPS. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Visit his website at www.mattsugam.com
 
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