Duke WBB hosts Columbia on Sunday 12/1 at 12pm ET on ACCN (
streaming link,
listen,
live stats)
After a very successful Vegas trip -- winning the Ball Dawgs Classic by beating #9 Kansas State and #8 Oklahoma -- the #13 Blue Devils return to Cameron for a game against Columbia at noon on Sunday. A win would all but ensure a top 10 ranking next week.
I just hope it doesn't come down to half court shots. Judging from these videos,
Duke is very good...
...but
Columbia is legendary.
Sunday's game is a rematch of a very close Duke win on Columbia's home floor last season (66-62:
recap,
box score,
highlights). That Lions team had Abbey Hsu, who averaged over 20 points per game, and scored 25 against Duke. Hsu was named the Ivy League Player of the Year, then graduated, and was chosen in the 3rd round of the WNBA Draft.
Megan Griffith is in her 8th season as Columbia's head coach, and she already has more wins than any of her predecessors. She spoke with the Columbia Daily Spectator, the campus paper, in its
season preview:
In addition to Weiss, Columbia returns 4 starters. Kitty Henderson, who put up 15 points in last year's Duke game, is one of them. She previewed this season in an interview with
Hoops HD.
Kitty Henderson:
"We obviously want a repeat of the Ivy title but have never won it outright. We have always had a bad game in the Ivy tourney so we would like to make the NCAA tourney…and the Sweet 16…and beyond. For me, I want to play with the confidence of a senior, get up good shots as one of our main players, and remain consistent. I have our team goals in mind all the time and being a top-25 program is something that we can reach thanks to our super-tough schedule."
Last year Columbia tied Princeton with 13-1 records in the regular season; Princeton beat them in the Ivy tournament final. The Lions were pleasantly surprised to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, but lost their First Four game to Vanderbilt.
The Ivy League held their Media Day back in October, and Kitty Henderson and Coach Griffith were
interviewed, along with returning starter Cecilia Collins.
Coach Griffith:
"I felt last year and the year before were great examples of what our schedule needed to represent to put us in the best possible position to play in March... This year, I'm not going to lie, was the hardest year of scheduling... When you're good, and you're fighting to play in March, and you have a reputation around the country, there's a lot of teams that don't want to play you... I honestly think that this year we tried to spread [quality games] across November and December... but also be as ready as possible for the Ivy League season..."
The Lions are 6-2, with solid wins against Providence (road), Florida Gulf Coast (home), and Ball State (neutral). They lost by 1 point at Villanova, and by 10 points against Indiana in the Bahamas. After Duke, they'll have chances for résumé-building wins against Richmond, and then Princeton and Harvard twice. Considering that they were barely on the right side of last season's tournament bubble, they have some idea of what it will take to get back, if they can't get the automatic bid.
Here's a look at Columbia's
roster.
PROBABLE STARTERS
5-10 sophomore guard Riley Weiss (16.6 pts, 2.9 reb, 1.1 ast, 1.1 stl)
5-10 senior guard Kitty Henderson (14.6 pts, 5.5 reb, 5.3 ast, 2.5 stl)
6-0 senior guard Cecelia Collins (13.9 pts, 5.5 reb, 4.9 ast, 1.3 stl)
5-11 junior wing Perri Page (8.5 pts, 6.8 reb, 1.3 ast, 2.0 stl)
6-1 junior forward Susie Rafiu (7.6 pts, 4.4 reb, 1.5 ast)
TOP RESERVES
6-0 freshman wing Maria Arrebola (4.3 pts, 0.8 reb, 0.4 ast)
5-10 sophomore guard Marija Aviljas (4.3 pts, 2.6 reb, 0.8 ast)
5-9 freshman guard Nasi Simmons (2.3 pts, 2.4 reb, 0.5 ast)
6-2 freshman post Marta Jaama (2.0 pts, 8.0 reb, 1.0 ast, 2.0 stl)
BENCH PLAYERS
5-10 sophomore guard Emily Montes (2.0 pts, 0.7 reb, 0.7 ast)
6-0 sophomore wing Blau Tor (1.1 pts, 1.3 reb, 0.5 ast)
5-9 freshman guard Mia Broom
5-11 sophomore guard Fliss Henderson
You don't need to take Introduction to Statistical Reasoning (Columbia undergraduate course
STAT UN1001) to visualize a very flat bell curve when plotting the individual heights of the players on this team. Almost all of them are between 5-10 and 6 feet tall. Sure, players have different skills and roles, but this suggests the potential for interchangeability. The minutes distribution, however, shows something different. Coach Griffith plays her starters a lot; Kitty Henderson leads the team with over 35 minutes per game, and 3 more starters average around 30 each.
As predicted, Riley Weiss has taken on the responsibility as the primary scorer, particularly from beyond the arc (23-of-65, or 35.4 percent). Kitty Henderson and Cecilia Collins combine for 11 rebounds and over 10 assists per game. Fliss Henderson, Kitty's younger sister, was a solid contributor as a freshman last season, but has yet to play this season. I don't know if she's injured.
Only one of the team stats from
Basketball Reference stood out to me: free throw percentage. Columbia is in the bottom 15 nationally, hitting 57.5 percent. Individually, Weiss (12-of-15, 80%) and Collins (18-of-25, 72%) are their best shooters at the line.
Bart Torvik has elevated Columbia from #73 in the preseason to #52 now. He sees Duke winning 78-64.
