Lions look to end football season with a win

With one game remaining, the Columbia football team still has a great deal to play for on Saturday as it takes on Brown at 12:30 p.m. at Robert K. Kraft Field. For one, Saturday marks the final time the Lions’ 26 seniors will play on Kraft Field, and their teammates will try to say goodbye to them with a victory. There’s also the difference between ending the season with a 2-5 Ivy League record for the second successive year and reaching three wins in the league for the first time since 2003.

“It’s an improvement on what we did, it tangibly shows improvement,” head coach Norries Wilson said about the importance of ending the season with a league record of 3-4. “It’s one rung up on the ladder depending on where it places us in the standings.”

In order to reach that mark, the Light Blue will have to stop one of the best offenses in the Ancient Eight. The Bears are led by senior wide receivers Buddy Farnham and Bobby Sewall. Farnham leads the league in receptions (65), receiving yards (898), and receiving touchdowns (9). But if teams focus too much attention on Farnham, Sewall can wreak havoc. As the versatile senior has proven over his career, he can run with the ball, throw it, and be a very proficient receiver. Though Farnham and Sewall both pose threats, Wilson believes Farnham may be one of the best players in the league.

“Buddy Farnham’s been making plays it seems like for six years and he’s only been there four,” Wilson said. “He gets open, he runs great routes, he catches the easy ball, he catches the hard ball, he returns kicks—he’s just an all-around player. [He’s] probably a candidate for player of the year in the league.”

Last week against Cornell, the Lions, who lead the Ivy League in interceptions with 18, picked off six passes en route to a 30-20 win at Schoellkopf Field in Ithaca. Some of those interceptions came as a result of pressure on the quarterback, others were good plays by the defenders, and others were just poor throws by Big Red quarterback Ben Ganter, who was playing through injury on his senior day. Whatever the case was last week, the Light Blue defense will really need to be on its game this weekend as it takes on a Bears offense averaging 400.3 yards per game—almost 40 yards per contest more than the next-best offense in the Ancient Eight.

Part of the responsibility for limiting Brown’s aerial attack falls on the Lions’ front four, who will need to pressure quarterback Kyle Newhall-Caballero. Against Cornell, the Columbia line took down Ganter five times. Among those sacks was one by senior defensive end Lou Miller, which put him at a league-leading seven for the season and established him as the Light Blue’s all-time leading sack artist. While the Lions are third in the league with 19 sacks, Newhall-Caballero has been taken down just 13 times this season, which poses a challenge for Columbia.

Though senior Millicent Olawale replaced freshman Sean Brackett at quarterback in the second half against Cornell, Wilson has maintained that he is unsure who will be under center to start the game on Saturday. Olawale looked sharp, running for 95 yards and two touchdowns and completing nine of 11 passes for 68 yards against Cornell after missing two games with a sprained right shoulder, but he has been seen on campus this week on crutches. The extent of Olawale’s new injury is unknown and it remains to be seen if he will take the field for his final game in a Light Blue uniform.

Regardless of who is throwing passes against Brown, he and the receivers will face a physical, opportunistic Bears secondary. This season, the Bears have the second-most interceptions in the league, with a total of 14.

“I think they’re [the Brown secondary] really physical. I don’t think that a lot of guys get open against them,” Wilson said. “Their safeties are really good because in their scheme they have to be run-stoppers as well. I think they play with a lot of confidence—they challenge a lot of balls in the air.”

While the Bears have the second-most interceptions in the league, they have also allowed the most passing yards, giving up an average of 246.8 per game. A major reason for this is that Brown forces teams to throw the ball with its staunch run defense, which is one of the best in the Ancient Eight. The Bears’ front seven is anchored by defensive lineman James Develin, who leads the league with 16 tackles for a loss and has also notched five sacks this season.

Though it is senior day for Columbia, Wilson said that the regular starting teams will take the field and all the seniors may not get play time depending on how the game goes. That, however, does not take away from this group that he believes has grown together and done great things for Columbia and its football program.

“I think as a group, in the past calendar year, they’ve grown up a lot—they really have,” Wilson said. “They have obviously finished what they started. They have gone out and helped the program to a higher level of respect than it had when I got here among the people that we have to play. They’ve made it exciting for the people that come out to the games because it doesn’t seem like over the time that they’ve been here—that second season was a rough season but outside of that one—I don’t think in the other three seasons that this group has been here that there have been many games that we just flat weren’t in. I’m really happy to have had the opportunity to be around them and to coach them.”