ITHACA, N.Y. — All 12 available Lions found the scoring column and the Columbia women's basketball team had its best shooting game in 37 years to soundly defeat Cornell, 91-64, Monday afternoon at Newman Arena.
It was a wire-to-wire win for Columbia (15-3, 4-1 Ivy), which now enters a five-game homestand after playing four of its first five Ivy League games on the road.
Abbey Hsu (20),
Jaida Patrick (19) and
Kaitlyn Davis (11) combined to score 50 points. Davis also crashed the glass for seven rebounds.
Perri Page had eight points and a game-high eight boards off the bench.
The Lions scored the game's opening six points, built a 12-point lead by the end of the quarter and shot 70 percent through the second quarter to enter the locker rooms up, 42-26. A 28-point third quarter ensued in which Columbia went 10-for-12 (.833) from the field, including a perfect 3-for-3 from beyond the 3-point arc. Cornell (8-10, 1-4 Ivy) did its best to try and keep up, but the offensive firepower of the Lions proved too much for the Big Red to handle.
"It's always tough coming up here to Ithaca," head coach
Megan Griffith '07CC said. "It's a rivalry between us and them being travel partners. I really respect what Dayna [Smith] does with her program.
"I'm just happy we put together 40 minutes today. I thought our first-half effort, defensively, I thought we were really locked in. Second half, I think offensively we were clicking a little bit better but defensively we had to sharpen up. It was a good test for us to head into this next five-game homestand."
Columbia's 63-percent shooting game (34-54) is the second-highest in program history and the best in its Div. I era. The program's previous Div. I record was 62.8 percent (27-43), which came on Nov. 10, 2006 at Loyola Maryland. The all-time record is 63.3 percent (38-60), which came in a win over Staten Island on Feb. 8, 1986, the program's last season competing at the NCAA Div. III level.
"We got a lot of transition looks in the first half and were able to get a lot of clean stops," Davis said. "Our bread and butter is through transition and that's what we tried to stick to in this game … It's always a team effort. You always know what you're going to get from all of us. We just try to play our game and be the best that we can be."
Hsu was the offensive catalyst early on, scoring 13 points in the first quarter and hitting three of her first five looks from three. Meanwhile, Columbia's defensive effort limited the Big Red to a 4-of-14 (.286) opening quarter.
Eight points by
Jaida Patrick in the opening 2:10 of the third quarter made it a 20-point game for the first time. She hit back-to-back threes in that run and capped it by pickpocketing Shannon Mulroy and driving to the basket all alone.
The margin never got closer than that. The Lions led by as many as 32 in the fourth.
Columbia begins a stretch of five games and four straight weekends at home, starting with a matchup against Brown (8-9, 1-4 Ivy) on Saturday at 2 p.m. ET.
FOLLOW THE LIONS
For the latest on the Columbia women's basketball, follow @CULionsWBB on
Twitter,
Instagram and
Facebook, or on the web at
GoColumbiaLions.com.
