How football and funny cardboard signs helped this Ivy League team win its first NCAA Tournament game

Columbia’s Megan Griffith embraced an idea from college football. It has offered clarity for the Lions and misdirection for their opponents.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — It was easy for eyes to wander to different places in Carmichael Arena on Thursday night as the Columbia Lions faced the Washington Huskies in a First Four battle of No. 11 seeds in the NCAA Tournament.

Some were drawn to the floor, where Kitty Henderson was wreaking havoc on defense and dishing out highlight-worthy assists. Others remained focused on the 3-point line, where Riley Weiss was effortlessly swishing long-range jumpers. Some looked at the scoreboard, where Columbia had erased a 13-point deficit to take a five-point lead midway through the fourth quarter.

And then some folks couldn’t stop looking at Columbia’s bench, where players and coaches for the Lions took turns hoisting cardboard signs in the air, slapping them and waving them, to signal different things to the players on the floor. One had the word “NEON” written on it. Another featured a green mushroom from the Super Mario Bros. video games. And a third showed a Columbia player flexing.

There were others too. And while fans in the crowd, media members on press row and the Huskies on the opposite bench might’ve been confused, every member of Columbia’s women’s basketball team knows the meaning of every one.

“I think in this program, we’re just big on the details. It’s just another way to communicate to your team,” Henderson said. “When we’re all on the same page, it’s a huge advantage, and like – why not just be very clear with what we’re doing?”

All season long, those signs have offered clarity for Columbia and misdirection for their opponents. On Thursday in Chapel Hill, they played a small but crucial role in helping the Lions defeat the Huskies 63-60, in a victory that was significant in so many ways.

It marked not only Columbia’s first-ever win in the NCAA Tournament, but also its first victory over a Big Ten squad. And for Henderson, one of the best players to ever walk through the doors of the Ivy League program – one who has been there for every step leading to this history-making moment – it was her 100th win in a Lions’ uniform.

Mitchell Northam / SB Nation

But back to those signs. Because they’re a little bit weird and silly and unorthodox, right?

These sort of images are very popular in college football, where paranoid coaches do everything they can to prevent their opponents from knowing what they’re going to do next. Flip on any Power 4 game in the fall and you’ll see men in quarter-zips wearing different colored hats all making signals on any given play. You’ll see staffers holding up different signs, some covered with internet memes or stills from movie scenes.

But there’s a reason college football teams keep doing it. Because it works. Because the players and coaches inside the program know what those symbols mean and no one else does. It would be too much work to figure out – much more complicated than simply staring at a catcher to steal pitching signals.

Still, in college basketball, this sort of practice is incredibly uncommon.

Columbia head coach Megan Griffith – a 39-year-old alumna of the university now in her ninth season leading the team – bills herself as a football fan. She likes the game because it’s complicated. There’s 22 players on the field, each with a different job.

She too noticed the assistant coaches who don’t wear team colors and who hold up signs with wild-looking images.

“I think the game of football is really intriguing, because there’s so many details and such a high level of communication coordination that happens,” Griffith says. “There’s people that are having signs and hats that are throwing the other team off. I think we’ve learned a lot from that.”

The way Griffith tells it, the idea to utilize signs on the bench came from assistant coach Allie Bassetti. One day, she took the plan to Griffith and said, what if we did that? Griffith thought it was a great idea, particularly because Columbia likes to switch its defensive schemes up often.

“If we’re going to be this multiple press team and we want them to have a greater awareness of when we’re about to be in the bonus or they’re about to be in the bonus, why don’t we just visually show them? I’m a big believer in communication,” Griffith says. “I think the best teams, the best leaders communicate at the highest levels, and that’s really hard to do just verbally. So let’s visually bring that in so there’s a nonverbal and a verbal for everything that we do and every way we communicate.”

Mitchell Northam / SB Nation

As Columbia began to make dents into Washington’s lead, different signs were hoisted into the air. The One-Up Mushroom was held up after one of Weiss’ five 3-pointers. The “NEON” symbol was raised after Henderson dished out one of her seven assists. On and on and on, until the buzzer sounded and the Lions celebrated at mid-court after making program history.

Aside from the fact that this was a team from the Ivy League with zero scholarship players upending a squad from the rich and mighty Big Ten, Columbia’s victory was improbable in several ways.

The Lions were down by double digits at halftime. The Huskies led for nearly 32 minutes. And in the first half, Washington’s Dalayah Daniels was absolutely owning them on the glass, grabbing 10 rebounds in 18 minutes of play over the first two frames.

Daniels wound up playing almost 38 minutes. But as Columbia stormed back in the second half, the 6-foot-4 fifth-year forward corralled just one more rebound, finishing with 11 for the game. The Lions actually won the battle on the glass, 30-29.

The message at halftime for Columbia was simple: stop letting Daniels grab misses. The Lions locked in and got it done.

Was there a sign for that?

“Yeah, it’s a big stop sign,” Henderson said with a grin. “It was a really physical game, so I think we just adjusted to that and just went up and had to win those 50-50 balls. That’s what you have to do to win.”

Next up for Columbia is a battle with sixth-seeded West Virginia. The signs will again be present on the bench. Henderson will be making plays, Weiss will be hitting deep shots, and the Lions will do whatever is necessary to put another tally in the win column.