Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll see why this season was a first for women’s college basketball in New York. We’ll also learn how LaGuardia Community College will spend a $116.2 million grant from a foundation run by Alexandra Cohen, whose billionaire husband bought the New York Mets in 2020.
This was the first season that the Columbia University women’s basketball team reached the NCAA Division I tournament.
The New York University women’s team, undefeated in 31 games, also reached the postseason, making it the first year the two colleges have done so at the same time — Columbia in Division I, at-large in the Big Dance , and NYU in Division III. NYU won the Division III national title by ending Smith College’s 16-game winning streak, 51-41.
“We kind of pulled away at the end and one of the refs congratulated me on the win,” said Meg Barber, the coach of the NYU team. “That was probably with about 45 seconds left. I said, “Not yet.” I said “It’s not over yet” and he said “Yes it is”.
And next season?
“I just found out we won the national championship,” Barber told me Thursday, “so I haven’t really thought about next year.”
Columbia’s season ended Wednesday with a 72-68 loss to Vanderbilt in a play-in game before the first round of the NCAA Division I Tournament.
When I asked Sabreena Merchant, who covers women’s basketball, for an assessment, she said Columbia was outplayed. The game was one of the rare times this season when Abbey Hsu, Columbia’s star senior guard, wasn’t the best player on the court.
“The first thing you think about with Abbey is to shoot,” Merchant said. “He uncharacteristically missed some free throws. To go 2-for-11 from 3 and miss three free throws is amazing.” Hsu is the Ivy League’s career leader in 3-pointers with 375.
Columbia had less experience playing teams like Vanderbilt that have a long history in the postseason — this was, after all, Columbia’s first appearance in the tournament. “You could see the athletic advantage that Vanderbilt had over Columbia,” Merchant told me. “As Abbey Hsu has done in Ivy League games, there was a different level of defense she faced against Vanderbilt — and her game didn’t step up like we hoped it would, or like Princeton does when they’re in those situations. ” Princeton, which beat Columbia to win the Ivy League title last week, will play West Virginia in the first round of the tournament on Saturday.
Even if Hsu had an off night against Vanderbilt, she had a remarkable career playing for Columbia. Holds the Columbia career scoring record in men’s or women’s basketball with 2,126 points.
He also has a remarkable personal story. She tore the ACL in her right knee when she was in high school.
A few weeks later, when she heard noises from an adjacent building at the school and the teacher ordered her class to leave, she was on crutches. He walked down the stairs and out of the school – Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in American history was unfolding.
Her first season at Columbia was cut short by the pandemic and her father, a doctor, died of complications related to Covid-19.
However, Hsu has been Columbia’s key player in women’s basketball under coach Megan Griffiths, who arrived in 2016. Before Hsu joined the team, Columbia had won 31% of its games and 26% of its games Ivy League. Since then, the team has won 80 percent of their games.
Weather
Enjoy a sunny day in the mid 40s. In the evening, prepare for a chance of rain with temperatures in the upper 30s.
ALTERNATIVE PARKING
Valid until Sunday (Purim).
New York breaking news
$116 million grant to LaGuardia Community College
Steven A. Cohen, the billionaire hedge fund that bought the Mets three and a half years ago, is investing more money in Queens — a $116.2 million grant to LaGuardia Community College for a workforce training center.
But his wife, Alexandra Cohen, is credited with the vision behind the grant, for a 160,000-square-foot vocational training facility, said Kenneth Adams, LaGuardia’s president.
“That’s 100 percent Alex,” Adams said. “It’s not just that it increases our training space by 25 percent, which it does, but it’s aligned with Alex’s vision for career and technical education.”
LaGuardia officials said the grant, from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation, was the largest ever awarded to a community college. Adams said it would pay to build 67 classrooms, enough to add 6,000 students to LaGuardia’s enrollment. LaGuardia will use the space to train students hoping to earn associate degrees, industry certifications and other credentials.
“I wanted to create a place where students have access to high-quality programs and facilities and can learn the skills they need to succeed in a rapidly changing world,” Alexandra Cohen said in a statement. LaGuardia said the center, to be called the Cohen Career Collective, will be the largest career and technical facility of its kind in the New York area.
Adams said the foundation had given the college a much smaller grant during the pandemic for a training program called Jobs Direct. It was intended to provide short-term job training to people from Queens who had lost their jobs due to the pandemic. After that, he said, Alexandra Cohen “made it clear she wanted to do something else.”
“Alex was born in Harlem, raised in Washington Heights, and she really identifies with our students” — many of whom are foreign, working-class students and the first in their families to go to college, Adams said.
Félix Matos-Rodríguez, the chancellor of the City University of New York, said the grant will multiply LaGuardia’s position “as an engine of upward mobility.”
The center will offer language classes for foreign-born students who need to improve their English before attending professional programs. It will also offer high school equivalency courses for students who want to earn a GED
Adams said the new center would occupy two floors in a former bakery overlooking the Sunnyside Yards rail depot.
“We’re getting more and more requests to train students for green jobs, particularly solar panel installation and maintenance,” Adams said. “Today we have no classroom equipped to teach it. We will.” He also said the center will allow LaGuardia to provide classes in energy transformation — beginning electrical work with contractors. Some of the labs can be used to teach courses involving cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
He said the “basically 1980s-level classrooms” used for LaGuardia’s nursing programs will also be upgraded. The center can also provide space for classes to train students for jobs in the hospitality industry.
“All of these programs are driven by labor dynamics and employer needs,” he said.
Cohen’s foundation has given more than $1.2 billion to nonprofit groups since 2001, including more than $185 million in Queens. Separately, Cohen is bidding with Hard Rock for a casino next to Citi Field, where the Mets play.
METROPOLITAN calendar
(Queens, 3 a.m.)
Dear Diary:
I woke up when
the city
stopped
speaking
He paced
from my bed
Other non-
dressed men
on the windows
listen
enjoyable
nothing
something
Elafria I
lit
a cigarette
and listened
— Rollie Anderson
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Submit submissions here and Read more Metropolitan Diary here.
