The folks at NFL Draft Bible have started to notice that graduating Columbia QB Anders Hill has the frame and the skills to make it in the NFL.
This week, they interviewed Hill about his chances.
Needless to say, it would be great to see him hook up and stay with an NFL team for at least the regular season.
Spring Battle
Of course, Hill's future options serve as a stark reminder that Columbia's starting QB position for 2018 is still up in the air. With the massive amount of proven talent at the wide receiver position on this team, it's essential that the Lions get someone who can throw the ball well in game situations.
That's what makes this coming spring practice season a little more crucial than usual. We learned this week that spring practice will start on March 20 and the spring game will be Saturday April 21 at 11am.
Again, it's seems hard to overstate how important spring practice will be this time around. Hopefully, a great signal caller will emerge.
36 comments:
Welcome back, Jake!
Just a comment on MBB....
Not so impressed with new coach through two seasons. Record speaks for itself. Compared to football, a new coach if good should have made a quicker impact. Engels seems to be sliding the wrong way and has a personality that strikes me more like a Mangurian than a Bagnoli.
Through two recruiting classes, don’t see the electric talent that would provide optimism
Just putting that out there.
The record does speak for itself, Chen, so far anyway. I hope, and I assume, our AD is taking it all in. Of course, it took the third season for Bagnoli to make a breakthrough and I'm guessing Engles will get the same opportunity.
The BB coach has had one recruiting class, not two. It's irrational to judge a team's performance after one recruiting class.
At least one top recruit, Maka Ellis, coming in. If we also get Bourne, a high scoring guard from Brooklyn, we'll be better. Could still use a dominating center/forward. Engels will have his chance next year.
I hope he gets it done. Regarding next year:"from your lips to God's ears"
Don’t see anything “irrational” in stating an opinion after two seasons. After two seasons in football there were clear and obvious signs of improvement...we ended the second football season like lions.....whereas in basketball we finished like lambs, losing to lowly Dartmouth and not even contesting Harvard.
Two seasons is plenty of time to register impact as a coach in MBB.
Not looking for heads .... just making an observation.
I think MBB will be better in 2018-19 losing only Hickman and Castlin. I also think Chen’s concern is legit. Disappointing lack of consistency game to game and sometimes half to half. Will the real Columbia please stand up ?
I found virtually nothing positive to take from this basketball season. A team that we blew out by 26 makes it into the tournament. We did not get better, we got worse, as the season went along. But I am whistling in the dark, because Engles will be back, despite his uncanny inability to win even a single game on the road, his failure to close out winnable games, his inscrutable personnel decisions, his failure to bring in any truly outstanding recruits, and his willingness to allow other coaches to work the refs while he stands on the sidelines like Mount Rushmore. We were one of the worst teams in the country at defending the three point shot, which to me is indicative of a failure to get his guys to be willing to run through walls for him. So count me as bummed. Now football.. there is a different story. Just look at the flood of high end talent which we had this past weekend for junior weekend.
The old lion is correct-two very disappointing seasons under Coach Engles and with only two known incoming recruits there is no reason to be optimistic about next year. Columbia had talent, but the complete lack of player development the past two years is mind boggling.
When was the last time Mount Rushmore had a truly outstanding recruit? Let's hope Engles gets one sooner.
Have to agree with Old Lion. We had a relatively young team that lost a lot of close games early but did not get better with time. Arguably, we got worse.
With our season on the line against the last place team, we laid an egg. Very disappointing season.
I,too, agree with Old Lion.
I know Engles began with a 1-30 season at NJIT and eventually turned the team into a successful one. But recruiting very good players to NJIT is qualitatively different from recruiting very good players to the Ivy League.
Losing to Dartmouth by two was a real bummer. And I'm sorry to say that over the past two years, I never saw the spark that would have provided me with a sense of optimism for the future.
Let's hope I'm wrong.
Ahhh......The"spark" thing.
This team has been notable this year for sparklessness.
Incredible inconsistency, such as our defeat of Harvard underlining what could have been but was not.
Which brings me inevitably to the coach. We all saw in enough games our potential to be much better. His primary assignment is to make that happen. All else (recruiting, etc.) is secondary. He is a COACH.
He failed.
Next year will not be much better.
Bags, as a COACH, made lemonade his first 2 years with Mangurian's lemons.
Bag's winning % in his first two CU years was 25%. He didn't make lemonade. Neither would I refer to any group of players willing to play for CU as "lemons". Engles' winning % for his first two years is 35%. Bags has two things over Engles. Bags has won in the Ivy League and understands the winning process so winning with another Ivy team with an entrenched losing environment is a less daunting process than it otherwise would have been been with someone different. Second, CU made a huge commitment to the football program in all sorts of ways to get recruits as players. Coaches are only as good as their players. Engles has a harder row to hoe, not having Bag's Ivy history nor, I suspect, a similar commitment by CU to basketball as it now does to football.
The third and fourth years in a college programs are the critical points. I suspect Pilling has already had a discussion with Engles about the state of the program, why it has not been successful, and what must happen in year three on both their parts. Football resurrection is special but there is nothing like NCAA tournament recognition and Pilling knows that.
Based upon Engles 2 year won/lost record (19-35), there is no reason to expect any real improvement in year 3. In fact, the team lost 3 more games this season than in Engles 1st year as head coach. Lack of defense, failure to close out games during which the team held a lead at halftime and too many crucial turnovers all contributed to a very disappointing outcome. As we've witnessed in football, coaching is critical to a successful program, so don't think our AD should hesitate in making a change for the 2018-2019 season.
Comparing Bags' first two years to Engles is ridiculous. Bags inherited a 23 game losing streak. We were among the worst programs' in FCS, if not the very worst. We went in one season from losing every game by an average of 30 points (literally) to holding our own almost every week. And freshmen have less impact in football than basketball, making the immediate turn to competitiveness even more impressive.
Engles inherited a program coming off a record number of wins and a CBI championship. No question Kyle Smith left the roster a bit thin, but the program was not competitively disadvantaged. This year was deeply disappointing. We lost a ton of games in which we led at halftime and just got outsmarted and outplayed in the second half. We didn't have superior talent, but we had enough to go 7-7 in league and to win more than eight overall. How do you beat Cornell by 26 at home and lose by 1 on the road? Or give up an 18-0 run to Penn in a game you're winning with five minutes left? By having talent but not grit. There is actually a decent core of talent returning. Be interesting what changes next year.
Please. Holding your own in football but losing is still losing. Bags was 5-15 before he hit the jackpot. The CU MBB 20 year record is 4 winning seasons, 15 losing seasons and one even win/loss season. CU MBB has won 44% of its games over that stretch. If CU football were not so anemic, CU MBB would be the poster child for historic CU athletic anemia. Imagine, basketball anemia in NYC of all places. Bags and Engles, football and basketball, are comparative.
Pilling's problems are deep and wide. He has to replicate football resources and recruiting across many sports, both men's and women's, to effectively change a university wide athletic losing environment to a winning one. Here's hoping he and Engles are on the same page. I for one am hoping Engles learns from whatever mistakes he has made and can replicate Bag's recent success. I want CU to be a perennial part of March madness and see its name and athletic reputation spread positively across the country.
Don B.....I respect your opinion, as well as the thoughts/stats you provide, but I think you are misreading my intentions here, as well as Roar Lions'.
The point we are making is simply this: Bags clearly did the wonders in his first 2 years that Engles has not. Please forget the W/L %, it's meaningless. Bags took a group of completely demoralized kids and turned them into a team. And yes, they WERE "lemons", after the Mango debacle. Bags brought them back. Those first 2 years they were competitive and had grit, even though the W/L was low. I didn't mind watching even though they lost, because they were trying, they were competitive, and they were improving.
This is the primary difference between FB and BB. Few of us see improvement; we see stagnation.
As you mention, NYC BB should be a marquis sport, and with a 5 starter team it is easier to turn a program around than most other sports. Didn't happen with MBB this year; ain't gonna happen next year. I promise you will not see the equivalent, or even close, of an 8-2 season in BB next year, given BB progress to date after 2 years.
Big Dawg,
I admire everything that people on this blog have done for the football program. You all and Jake in particular deserve a special place in heaven for that alone. I will note some points though, exclusively mine. One, I could never call players at CU "lemons" even if they came out of a non-program like PM's. Few players at CU deserve that characterization and certainly not the PM contingent. They deserve the equivalent of Purple Hearts. If they were lemons they could never have performed for Bags as they did.
Point two is that in and of itself turning around a five starter team, especially with dominant freshmen, is conceptually easier than turning around a 33 man (O, D, and Special Teams) football team. The reality is that there are seven other teams in the Ivies recruiting the same players as CU and maintaining or turning around their teams with those players. What player is going to a place like CU if Penn and Princeton, and now Harvard and Yale, come calling? They are proven MBB programs with legitimate shots at the Ivy title and the NCAA tournament. Why would anyone chose CU? You can go hire a name coach but that dude still has to win. And that winning program will take another three to four years to establish itself, a la the Bagnoli model.
Bagnoli is a terrific coach, always has been. But he needs players as good or better than the rest of the league. To get those players at CU he has a specific recruiting model with NYC as its centerpiece, the specific player as crucial in the CU rise to excellence, and an administration finally committed to the CU resources necessary to support excellent football. Hiring excellent football staff and related increases in salaries are two examples of administration commitment. I don't know if Engles has the same excellent support staff and corresponding salaries, as the counterpoint, nor do I know his recruiting model. The AD has a critical oversight role in that process. Perhaps Engles and his staff are not up to the task. But maybe there is a program being constructed/in place as we speak that is addressing why that is, if a large part of the problem is outside coaching ability. It is a very difficult process to resolve. It took football how many years? Resolution is foremost, or should be, in the AD's mind because the correct model can be replicated across all sports. It is the AD's way to CU athletic immortality.
In terms of the lack of grit comments above I would say maybe it wasn't coaching leadership/know how at all. Maybe the coaches and players gave everything they had but the other teams were better on that particular day. Did you see the US woman biker in the Summer Olympics who led the entire race but had nothing left at the end and finished fourth? Nowadays people don't seem to want to accept that the other team was just better, that somehow it was lack of grit or coaching incompetence. The job is to recognize why you are losing and then correct it. Maybe creating a winning CU program in MBB in the Ivy League is in fact harder than creating a winning CU football program.
I would cut Big Dawg a little slack on the lemons comment. Big Dawg simply meant to convey that the players Al inherited were in a bad place having lived through the Mango/Murphy years. I can attest to the fact that BG does hold all of those guys in high esteem. Sometimes even Hemingway uses an inelegant word.
One way of elevating all the sports that practice and play in the Dodge Physical Fitness Center, especially basketball (both men's and women's) would be, in my opinion, for the University administration to take another giant athletic step by tearing down Dodge completely and raising and spending the necessary moneys to build a state-of-the-art athletic facility befitting the world-class university Columbia is, in the world-class city that New York City is.
I'm sorry, but the Columbia's basketball teams play their games in a very nice high school gym, and have been doing so for a half-century or so, an athletic ambience that exudes, even if subconsciously, the message that, well, Columbia, bottom-line, doesn't give a damn about being the best in athletics, as it is in academics. Princeton doesn't send out this message. Neither does Harvard nor Yale. Yet Columbia now rivals the aforementioned academically around the world.
As we all know, under the powerful leadership of key, courageous alumni, and the concomitant response of the University administration, the terribly long debacle that was Columbia football not only has ended, but also, like a phoenix, has blossomed into a most competitive team.
Yes, it will take tons of money to make this change happen, but Schiller, who is now chairman of the Board of Trustees, and was also a member of Columbia's last Ivy League championship basketball team, is clearly in the right position to make this happen. Moreover, basketball is not the only sport that would be positively impacted; indeed, all the other sports that now practice and compete in Dodge would be impacted in the same way, not to mention all the students, professors, and staff of the University who also would benefit exponentially in their attempts to stay healthy, but currently find this facility extremely cramped and outdated.
If Columbia is soon to become Ivy League champs in football, why not in basketball, and a host of other sports, as well.
Todd Hawks...hammer squarely hitting the nail
Remmeber that Princeton's Jadwin Gym was originally designed to nestle onto Morningside park until the locals resisted and hippies protested
With Harlems gentrification why not bring back plans for an on campus University Athletic Complex serving MBB, nationally ranked squash and fencing, wrestling, swimming!
This would be the next leap forward
The gym in the park was ready to go as of 1963. The administration stalled to raise money. The results were disastrous. It could have been done by the mid 60s and would have been a great addition to the university and the neighborhood. And as far as the “ nostalgia”surrounding the events of 1968, count me out.
Dodge would be too expensive to rip down and rebuild--it's right in the middle of campus. But...Manhattanville is ready and waiting. Raise the money and you can start pouring concrete tomorrow. I've got to believe something like this is on on Pilling's to-do list.
Uris sits right on top of the original University Gym and should be repurposed into a long overdue Dodge expansion for all main campus sports, including our new Ivy Championship squash team. Period. That's what a smart school would do.
Central location. Perfect. That is why, Columbia being Columbia, it is unlikely to happen. But that is what SHOULD happen. C'mon Columbia, make the correct athletics-related decision for once.
The Arts and Sciences departments are screaming for space and they can essentially move right into Uris (with a few coats of paint). You're not going to retrofit a building like Uris to accommodate squash courts (that need a certain minimum height). Build a world-class facility in Manhattanville. Uris is certainly in a central location, but the university doesn't have the cash to rip it down and build from scratch.
Sorry if sensitivities were bruised, but a team with an 0-23 record can accurately be described as "lemons". Nothing on the individual kids, but as a football team they totally sucked. Period. I saw them play, and they were horrible. That was my clear point and still is. Bags changed that from his first game. You are free to disagree.
Re the gym, it is an urban legend that our plans were used by Princeton. If you research this on the web you will understand.
Being a misanthrope, I find it poetically just and elegant that the mutual-use gym proposed for both Harlem and CU and paid for by CU was quashed by local and leftist political opportunists who labeled it "gym" crow because the Harlem entrance was at the bottom. (which happened to be where Harlem was). So now, after 50 years, Harlem still has no facility except the crime-ridden park it always did.
The only request we at CAEC made 4 years ago which was not granted was an athletic facility on campus. While the current gym is far better than our original band box, it is vital to future BB development to provide a first class arena at Morningside.
Main campus location vs Manhattanville? Uris is the far better choice. Having a gym on main campus that is walkable from all dorms would provide a much greater improvement in quality of life for students than having to haul all the way to 130th Street.
In re squash courts, raise the ceiling a bit and retrofit Watson Library into new courts. Not hard.
Centrality. Location, location, location. Pardon me, but the hell with Arts & Sciences' demands. Columbia has abysmally failed on the gym front for so long. Time to partially make up for that without requiring students to hoof it for 15 blocks just to get a workout.
Big Dawg,
You said different things in different posts but I think your clear point was the team was a lemon and the kids were coached horribly, that teams can play like lemons but the kids are not lemons themselves. I'll take Old Lion's comment to heart.
Maybe Engles and his staff aren't the ones as with so many coaches before them but people above are making the point I made about lack of administration and infrastructure commitment to MBB. CU has historically prioritized and thought in terms of academic excellence only. Athletic excellence and community excellence generally fall by the wayside to the point where the old-fashioned gentleman's C grade is acceptable to the university for athletics and community. Most of the other Ivy schools think differently so CU falls behind the 8-ball when it comes to resources and commitment devoted to athletic competition. As it stands now the football program is a one-off treatment of a larger issue.
Boston Lion,
To hell with Arts and Sciences? The university's reputation depends on the health and reputation of its arts and sciences departments. I love Columbia sports like the rest of folks posting on this board, but I also like seeing the university at the top of the rankings lists, and more so than doing well at sports.
I agree that Dodge needs to be renovated in a big way. The fact is that Columbia's not going to rip down a functional building like Uris. Maybe you could position some squash courts in the old Watson Library. A new basketball venue? Not going to happen.
So, renovate Dodge so students have a great gym near the dorms, but build a new basketball, squash and swimming complex up at Manhattanville.
Ungvar,
To express myself more clearly, I didn't really mean to hell w A&S in the way that you took it. I simply meant that pointy-headed Columbia has always had an extremely lopsided relationship between academics (way on top) and athletics and the like (way on the bottom). This imbalance is CU's unfortunate hallmark. What else explains Columbia's unacceptably lagging performance in fball and bball for so long.
To put it bluntly, Columbia has an inferior athletic facility to my high school, which should not be the case for a Division 1 world class university. We should expect at least to have....5000 seat Pavillion for BB....swimming and diving pools....indoor track and field field house....squash courts....arena for fencing....alumni facility....and why not a hockey rink or two?
Might be of interest to everyone.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2017/09/18/at-harvard-education-through-athletics-and-vice-versa/105748740/
Chen,
That's 100% right, and it's what I've been saying to our new AD since his arrival.
Btw, for several years, I used to go to Hong Kong and other cities in China regularly on business and spent a lot of time there. I wish that I'd known that you were out there.
Boston Lion.....next time you come please look me up!
Curtis Chen
Ping me on linked in or something!
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