Word: columbia
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Morningside Heights has been in mourning all week over the sudden and inexplicable demise of the Lions. Columbia had its "big four" of Ricky Free, Juan Mitchell, Shane Cotner, and all-time assist leader Alton Byrd returning for the third year in a row. They had played exhilarating ball last year on their way to winning 13 of their last 15 games. The league race came down to a harem scarem finish with the Lions defeating Penn on the last weekend of the season and then losing to Princeton the next night to finish a game behind the Quakers...
After the loss, Byrd, the team captain, told a New York Post reporter that the team was riddled with dissension and the story broke the next day under a banner headline. Mahar and the rest of the Columbia team denied that there was any disharmony...
...drama reached Wagnerian proportions on Tuesday when the Lions faced Fordham in Morningside Heights. Mahar had been assistant to Tom Penders, who left Columbia at the end of last year to become head coach of the Fordham Rams. Penders was now returning for the first time to face the squad he had built from scratch...
Penders brought with him his 7-ft. Sudanese center Dud Malwal Tongal, whom he had previously hoped to bring to 116th and Broadway. The Columbia admissions office, however, felt Dud hadn't made enough progress in the English language course he was taking and rejected him, which increased Penders' disenchantment with what he perceived as a lack of administration support for the basketball program...
When Fordham held on the upset Columbia, 76-75, it was a personal vindication for Penders, who had been criticized for abandoning a potential Ivy championship team. After Fordham's win, the Post ran the headline "Troubled Columbia Dealt Death Blow" and the Columbia Spectator pronounced "Columbia Basketball Died Last Night...