Lions Still Looking for a Win

With a Columbia quarterback, wide receiver, and linebacker sitting at the postgame press conference following Harvard’s 34-0 trouncing of the Lions, a reporter asked about the elephant in the room.

“Is playing the game still fun for you guys anymore?"

After a long silence, quarterback Trevor McDonagh answered unconvincingly, “Yeah, it’s still fun.” But then he followed it with, “When you play the sport of football, you don’t have a choice.”

On Saturday, Columbia didn’t have a choice. Despite being the home team, the Lions football players were also on team buses to travel all the way across Manhattan to the Columbia Athletic Complex to face Harvard.

The question wasn’t who would win, but by how much. Last year, after Harvard put up 69 points against Columbia, setting the mark for the most points a Crimson team has scored against the Lions, Columbia coach Pete Mangurian claimed, “we won’t lose 69 to nothing next year.”

He did keep his promise—the Lions cut that margin in half this year, allowing only 34 points. In fact, this may have been a defensive win for Columbia, which had over the previous two weeks given up 53 and 56 points to Dartmouth and Yale, respectively.

But the relatively low score doesn’t tell the whole story. Even a devoted Harvard football fan might not recognize some of the names on the box score—running backs Bo Ellis and Tyler Caveness, wide receivers Scott Miller and John Van Allen, quarterback Tanner Wrisley.

Ellis shouldered the rushing game this week—the same freshman back who last week, in his first collegiate action, made the rookie mistake of not falling on top of a dropped sideways pass that led to seven Dartmouth points. This week, Murphy retired Paul Stanton after the starter carried the ball three times—one was a 54-yard scamper, one a touchdown run to put Harvard up 14-0 in the first quarter. The freshman came in and tallied 53 yards on 14 carries.

Caveness, a senior who last saw playing time in 2011 against Bucknell, came in for Casten in Harvard’s final drive and ran for his first collegiate touchdown in the waning moments of the game to push the Crimson’s lead out to 34.

Miller, likely the seventh receiver on a healthy Crimson team’s depth chart, expanded from his usual role of punt returner and became Harvard’s second leading receiver on the day with five catches for 56 yards.

Van Allen and Wrisley, who both made their collegiate debuts on Saturday, had limited action in the game—Van Allen caught just one pass during the Crimson’s last drive, while Wrisley was put into the game for just the final kneel down, but their brief presence in the game was telling. This contest wasn’t a football game worthy of Harvard’s A team, but rather was an opportunity for some players usually on the Crimson’s practice squad to get game-timef experience.

But Mangurian doesn’t have the same luxury as Harvard coach Tim Murphy of deciding when to put inexperienced players in.  The entire Lions starting corp is littered with inexperienced underclassmen, due to losing more experienced starters to injury or maybe and more probably, lack of interest in playing for a team that requires a 20-minute bus commute to practice.

Highly touted Stanford transfer quarterback Brett Nottingham went down with an injury in the first game of the season, so Mangurian went to freshman quarterback Kelly Hilinski, who joined four other rookies on the Columbia offense.

Midway through the first quarter, Mangurian pulled Hilinski in favor of sophomore McDonagh, but to no avail. McDonagh put together some drives for Columbia, even getting the Lions into Harvard’s red zone at the end of the first half.

On that drive, the first drive of the game that looked like it wouldn’t end in a punt, Columbia was forced to go for a 4th and 2 because of lack of confidence in a kicker who was 1-for-3 on the year with a long of 23 yards. McDonagh’s pass hit the ground, and it was Harvard ball again.

It isn’t hard to see why Columbia players might be disheartened at this point in the season. The Lions are now 0-8 (0-5 in Ivy play) and have lost its last three Ancient Eight games by a combined 131 points.

But perhaps there’s a reason for Columbia to rejoice. The last time that Columbia won a game was against Cornell last year. Next week, the Lions take on the Big Red again in a battle between the two winless teams of the league.

Maybe next Saturday, Columbia will put points on the scoreboard. And maybe, the Lions may even win a game. And maybe then, McDonagh and company will finally be able to have some fun on the field.

—Staff writer Samantha Lin can be reached at samantha.lin@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @Linsamnity.