Steal the show

• TWEET
• SHARE
• SHARE

History tells us not to expect pretty basketball anytime Columbia plays Penn -- or any other team for that matter. As Friday night's game approaches, statistics tell us we're in for a really ugly 40 minutes.

According to stat guru Ken Pomeroy, Penn is 13th in the nation in forcing 25.9 turnovers per 100 opponent possessions. Pair that with Columbia's 25.4 turnovers per 100 offensive possessions, good for 320th of 334 Division-I schools, and you've got a real mess. (The Quakers average 19.1 turnovers per 100 possessions and are ranked 49th; Temple, unsurprisingly, is tops with 12.5/100)

Throw in Ibrahim Jaaber -- the NCAA leader in steals per game -- and the job of Columbia point guard looks worse than any New York City sanitation worker.

Cornell coach Steve Donahue, who will be seeing Jaaber for the sixth time in his career Saturday night compared the junior to one of Penn's most notable guards of the past, Jerome Allen. Donahue coached Allen when he was an assistant to Fran Dunphy in the mid 1990s, and it was Allen's steals mark that Jaaber broke earlier this season to become the all time Penn leader.

"He's already way ahead of Jerome Allen's steal record at Penn," Donahue told me on Wednesday. "That's mind-boggling because I coached Jerome Allen for four years and I can't remember anyone being as aggressive on the defensive end as him. This kid already has more steals than him -- a lot more -- and he still has more than a year left. I have just never seen anyone dominate the defensive side of the ball at that position as him."

The Quakers are favored by 14 1/2 over Columbia, and judging by what happened a month ago at the Palestra, they look pretty good to cover, even though the game won't be pretty.