One of the adjustments Columbia fans are going to have to make as long as the Lions continue to play this well is putting an end to focusing on any individual win and looking at the bigger picture.
So, let's take a few more victory lap observations about Columbia's fantastic Homecoming win over Penn before focusing entirely on the showdown with Dartmouth in Hanover this Saturday:
Hill Country
Again, since day one of 2017 we've known that this season rides mostly on QB Anders Hill's shoulders. So far, he is delivering in a big way:
-Hill is now 8-5 as a starter and owns a six game winning streak at QB. Since the 1996 team that started 6-0 featured two different starters because of injuries, (Bobby Thomason and Paris Childress), this is either the longest winning streak for a CU starting QB since Gene Rossides '49 won six straight beginning with the 1947 historic win over Army, or the longest winning streak for a starting Columbia QB since Cliff Montgomery '34 racked up six straight wins. The sixth win was Montgomery's final game as a Lion... the 1934 Rose Bowl. The reason we don't know is that reliable starting lineups for each game during those team winning streaks so long ago are not available.
-Hill has now delivered three wins at QB where the Lions were either behind or tied with under two minutes left in regulation.
-My favorite QB stat is 3rd down passing, and Hill on 3rd down vs. Penn was 8-for-10 for 70 yards, five 1st downs, two TDs, (including the 24 yard game winner), one INT, and three sacks.
For the season on 3rd down passing, Hill is 28-for-36 for 323 yards, 19 1st downs, five TDs, two INTs, six sacks and an 8.9 yards per attempt average.
-Overall this season, Hill has 1,365 yards passing, an incredible 8.4 yards per pass attempt, 13 TD passes and five INTs.
Columbia is indeed a resilient team this year, stepping up in the face of tight games and/or late deficits three times this season already. But when you have a long passing game that succeeds with the regularity the Lions are enjoying, you're going to be able to come back and win games against some steep odds. We've known Hill is a good long ball passer since we first saw his highlight reel tapes, and this resiliency thing begins and ends with him.
The Coach
-Head Coach Al Bagnoli is now 10-15 at the helm of the Lion program. He's reached 10 wins eight games faster than Norries Wilson and 29 games faster than Ray Tellier.
-Bagnoli has now defeated every team in the Ivy League at least once.
-Bagnoli is now just one win away from becoming the fastest to achieve a winning record in a season for a Columbia football head coach since Lou Little did it in his first year at CU in 1930.
The Fans/Game Experience
-The official attendance for the game was just over 13,000, but the key factor was how the crowd stuck it out during Columbia's weak start and how LOUD it got down the stretch. Early morning drizzles and some uncomfortably humid weather may have been the only things keeping it from getting much closer to 15,000 in a 17,000 seat stadium.
-The next home game is on 11/4 vs. Harvard, which could be a shoo-in for a sellout if Columbia and the Crimson are still very much in the Ivy title race by then.
Wainwright's Time
-WR Josh Wainwright now has 1,053 total yards receiving through one and a half seasons as a Lion. As impressive as that is, he still needs 488 more yards this year to match Austin Knowlin 10's, 1,541 yards through his first two seasons on the team.
-Wainwright's 538 yards receiving this season puts him just 462 yards shy of the Columbia single season record of an even 1,000 held by Don Lewis '84 who set that mark in 1982.
Comeback History
-The last time Columbia came back from two or more scores down in the 4th quarter to win was the 2011 season finale against Brown when the Lions came back from 21-7 down to force OT and win it 35-28.
Linebacker Emergence
-Michael Murphy's big game Saturday got a lot of deserved attention, but freshman Justin Woodley is making more of an impact week after week even as just a 3rd down specialist at the LB position. Sean White was officially listed as a starter Saturday, but I'm pretty sure he was out for the entire game and mostly replaced by Parker Tobia. But after all three of Columbia's 2016 LB's graduated, this area of the team was an understandable question mark. Now it looks like a strength filled with underclassmen.
Secondary Concerns
-5th year senior CB Denzell Hill was reinjured against Penn and we'll have to see if he's back next week or beyond.
-For the second straight week, Columbia's opposing QB's consistently overthrew open receivers who had beaten the Lion coverage. Whether those overthrows are just the result of poor QB skills, WR timing disrupted by the CU DB's, or just plain luck is probably only clear to the Columbia coaches studying the tape. But look for Dartmouth and the rest of the Lion opponents to see if they can't connect where Marist and Penn failed.
3 comments:
Hill, Wainwright and Smith-best offensive trio in the IL.
RLB...saw same...and he was on bottom of big pile for a while.....could have been a fluke accident!
"The next home game is on 11/4 vs. Harvard, which could be a shoo-in for a sellout if Columbia and the Crimson are still very much in the Ivy title race by then."
It would be nice if this was the case, but it won't be. I think 8,000 is a best case scenario. Unfortunately outside of homecoming the attendance has been historically bad in recent years, so even drawing 8,000 would be nearly DOUBLE a non-Homecoming game. Cornell is the only other game that comes close to generating a full stand (albeit on the visitor's side).
Attendance across the league is pretty horrific now even compared to 10 or 15 years ago. It's a tough thing to change, even with a hot team.
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