The Columbia women’s basketball team is preparing for a pivotal game on Saturday, aiming to secure its fourth consecutive Ivy League Regular Season Championship. The Lions, with a 20-6 overall record and 11-2 in the Ivy League, will face Harvard (16-10, 9-4 Ivy) at Schiller Court in Levien Gymnasium. The match is scheduled to start at 2 p.m.
Saturday’s contest marks Senior Day for co-captains Perri Page and Susie Rafiu. Both athletes have contributed significantly during their time at Columbia, combining for over 1,400 points and leading the team to three straight league titles. Their class could become the first in program history to win four consecutive championships.
Only student tickets remain available for the sold-out event. Students are required to present valid identification from Columbia University or Barnard College to receive admission at the door. Senior Day celebrations will begin around 1:45 p.m.
The game will be broadcast live on ESPN+ and the ESPN app, with Lance Medow and Maren Walseth providing commentary.
Columbia enters the final regular season game tied with Princeton for first place in the Ivy League standings. A victory would guarantee at least a share of the championship and secure the top seed in Ivy Madness due to Columbia’s two wins over Princeton this season.
The Lions have recently received notable national attention. They earned 25 points in this week’s Associated Press Top 25 poll—the highest total in program history—and are also ranked No. 23 by The Athletic’s weekly Power Rankings. This marks their fifth week receiving AP Poll votes this season.
Columbia has won 11 of its last 12 games, averaging over 71 points per contest while maintaining strong defensive statistics such as a +4.1 turnover margin and outscoring opponents by nearly 18 points per game.
Riley Weiss has been recognized as Ivy League Player of the Week six times this season—a distinction achieved by only seven players in league history—and was named an AP National Player of the Week Honorable Mention twice recently. She leads all Ivy League players in scoring (19.9), total points (517), three-pointers made per game (2.85), total threes (74), three-point percentage (37%), and field goals made (186). Nationally, she ranks among the top twenty scorers and top twenty-one in three-pointers made per game.
Perri Page is among four NCAA players averaging at least 14 points, six rebounds, two assists, two steals per game while shooting above fifty percent from the field—a group that includes All-Americans Sarah Strong (UConn) and Madison Booker (Texas).
Several career milestones are within reach for Columbia’s players entering Saturday’s matchup: Perri Page needs five rebounds to become just the seventeenth player in program history with five hundred career boards; Riley Weiss is close to moving up several all-time lists including scoring and field goals made; Susie Rafiu ranks fourth all-time at Columbia in field goal percentage.
Recent bracketology projections suggest that Columbia could earn either an automatic or at-large bid into upcoming NCAA tournaments as a No. 10 or No. 11 seed across multiple outlets including ESPN and USA Today.
Since early last year, Columbia has established a strong home court advantage—winning eighty-six percent of its games since fall of twenty-twenty-two—including an impressive thirty-and-four record against conference opponents since fall twenty-twenty-one.
Columbia’s Data & Analytics Department notes that all six top-used players maintain high steal percentages above two-and-a-half percent—unique within their conference—and that certain combinations of scoring from Mia Broom and Nasi Simmons correlate strongly with winning outcomes.
Weiss remains one of only two NCAA athletes this year with multiple games scoring thirty-eight or more points; she also matched school records for three-pointers made during these performances and was recognized nationally through various awards nominations throughout her standout season.
Against Brown last week, despite committing twenty-six turnovers—the most since November twenty-nineteen—the Lions managed a victory thanks partly to strong free throw shooting accuracy exceeding ninety-three percent as well as extending their longest active series winning streak against any opponent to fifteen games.