Columbia’s Missing Link

Lions Ready to Roar after Adding One Piece

by Jay Pearlman

Something was amiss, and I couldn’t quite get my arms around what it was. I saw a good shooting team, reasonably athletic from an Ivy League perspective, well-coached. Yet coach Joe Jones’ Columbia Lions lost all three times I saw them play last season, all to mid-major opponents and twice at home. I even said on radio in Boston last March that center Ben Nwachukwu (for obvious reasons I call him “Big Ben”) would challenge Ibrahim Jabber as Ivy Player of the Year this season.

And yet something was missing.

I had the Columbia game at Providence in my calendar for weeks, providing a first opportunity this season to consider the question. Now, while Providence was too strong for Columbia at home in the Dunk that evening, one player caught my attention and all at once both solved the puzzle of last season and showed promise for this his freshman year: 6-2 guard Patrick Foley from Blue Point, Long Island (attended the “other” St. Anthony’s High School).

It’s all crystal clear now – what was missing, and what’s now on the roster. Al McGuire used to say that the lower the level, the more important guard play is. He meant college as compared to the NBA, but the same is true for mid-major compared to BCS conference teams, Ivy as compared to mid-major, Division III as compared to Division I. And while few teams in the Ivy League have a guard on their roster who can go get his own shot at most any time, Columbia didn’t have such a player. (Jabber can at Penn, Leon Pattman at Dartmouth when he’s healthy, the younger Damon Huffman at Brown, and Drew Housman at Harvard come to mind as players who can; Cornell’s Freshman of the Year Adam Gore probably can’t, and Princeton seems to be the only team that can succeed without such a player.) Incumbent point guard Brett Loscalzo is a nice Ivy player who passes first and can hit an open jumper, but is simply not in that category. Enter Foley.

Foley is a wiry and athletic 6-2, handles well, runs well, and can go to the basket without a block. He’s not a pure shooter, but he’s a good shooter; because his shot has to be honored, he’ll have lots of opportunities to penetrate. He can cross in front, beat his man, shoot or dish. And he’ll make every other player on the Lions – including Loscalzo – better. He is already averaging 20 minutes per game (to Loscalzo’s 23), so look for Foley to start by the beginning of conference play, and certainly to play closer to 30 minutes per game.

And now, look for Columbia to finish in the top tier of the Ivy League, even challenge for the conference title. Now, this Columbia team isn’t as imposing as the one I saw with Alton Byrd, Rickie Free and Juan Mitchell, and certainly has no Jim McMillan on the roster, but just the thought of a team talented enough to compete with Penn and Princeton up on 116th Street is pleasant indeed.

Columbia head coach Joe Jones was gracious enough to call us (twice, in fact) to talk about Foley. It’s not that Jones wouldn’t have called us back on any other player, or in furtherance of any request, but I could hear a certain excitement, an enthusiasm clearly not manufactured, in his voice when we talked about his freshman. “Throw-back point guard” and “son of a coach” were the first two phrases out of Jones’ mouth, then he compared him to a player I don’t know, Sean Kennedy at Marist, and one most of us have heard of, then thought better of the second name, and asked me to keep it confidential.

Without committing to starting Patrick this season, Jones told me he’s already on the floor for most “big moments,” and made clear most would soon be all. “Understands the game” (what a great comment about a freshman), “makes great post-entry passes” were also phrases used to describe his play. When I asked what needs improvement, Jones said Patrick’s defense (a standard conservative answer, but I think true in this case), and then that Patrick “thinks too far ahead” on offense rather than letting a play develop and trusting his instincts.

Jones won the recruiting battle for Foley against Davidson, Yale and Harvard, and more than one coach at a slightly higher level may already be sorry he didn’t jump in. He told me the young man is academically brilliant and had a “near perfect” SAT. When we compared him to Ivy players, Jones dismissed Jabber as too athletic, and Huffman as more of a jump-shooter. Jones’ closest comparison was to Housman, though Foley is a couple of inches bigger and might be faster. Whatever the comparison, Foley is going go be a handful in the conference for four years, and could well bring a title to 116th Street before he’s through.