There’s one thing Columbia women’s basketball never traveled without this season.
It’s a poster board that coach Megan Griffith has coined the team’s “potential board.” The goal of it is to give players a tangible tracker of their progress as a team throughout the season, using little Lions head stickers as markers to show growth.
Once a week, Griffith pulls the board out and checks in with the team.
“It’s been a great marker for us to see, like, it’s not always about wins and losses but how are you responding to certain things, how are you responding to adversity in practice, not just games,” senior Cecelia Collins said Wednesday.
According to the potential board, Columbia still hasn’t reached its ceiling.
The team is hovering around 85 percent of how good Griffith and her staff believe the Lions could be.
“That 15 is what everybody’s looking for right now,” Griffith said. “We all have it.”
Finding a way to tap into it is the goal, and there’s no better time than the NCAA Tournament to get there.
Columbia set a goal at the beginning of the season to become the first Ivy League team to reach a Sweet 16.
After securing an at-large bid Sunday, Thursday’s game against fellow 11th-seeder Washington in the First Four is the next step to making that dream a reality.
There was a sense of calmness to Columbia before Wednesday’s practice.
“It does feel very familiar,” Griffith said. “Felt very confident and having another night of sleeping in your own bed really helped us. It helped us reset, helped us move forward. Honestly, I woke up this morning and I was ready to play.”
Washington (19-13, 9-9 Big Ten) and Columbia (23-6, 13-1 Ivy) are evenly matched teams.
The Huskies offense has been described as “methodical” and “surgical” in the way it attacks its opponent.
They are one of the nation’s top 3-point shooting teams, averaging 7.9 makes from deep per game while converting at a 37.3 percent clip on 3s.
But Columbia has done plenty of homework on its opponent since Sunday’s reveal.
“It’s knowing their tendencies,” senior Kitty Henderson said. “When they’re closing out, you know they want to shoot it. It’s an adjustment we’ve got to make. We’ve been practicing for the last two days and will continue to do that today. I think knowing that is a big advantage in making them shoot the shots they don’t want to shoot.”
The Lions didn’t make it past the First Four in last year’s tournament. But this time, Columbia is eager to surprise some people.
“Watching us should be like watching a force that just plays together the entire time and any adversity that hits, it doesn’t matter,” Henderson said. “We still look the same team. We’re consistent throughout. I’d love them to be able to see what a winning culture can do.”
