Another Ivy League school will be looking for new leadership as Jim Engles is stepping down after nearly a decade as head coach at Columbia. The Lions are set to begin their first head coaching search since 2016, hopeful to make significant gains in this conference ahead.
Engles is a New York native who played at Dickinson College before gaining early coaching experience nearby at Wagner and Rider. He actually spent five years as an assistant at Columbia in the 2000’s before getting his first head coaching job at NJIT in 2008.
His eight years with the Highlanders featured some solid work, inheriting a broken program that would win just 1 game in his first season. He led the program to a regular season title in the Great West Conference a few years later and guided their transition into the ASUN, compete with a pair of 20-win seasons.
Columbia saw his success in New Jersey and brought him aboard in 2016 to lead the program, but there wasn’t a lot of memorable moments in the years that would follow. Engles led the Lions to 5th place finishes in his first two seasons but would never finish better than 5-9 in the Ivy League. In fact, Columbia finished dead last in the conference in four of his last five seasons.
Engles steps away from Columbia basketball after a disappointing stretch where he won just 21% of his league games. This program hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 1968 and didn’t get particularly close over this near decade stretch, leaving the program to turn to a new leader.
Obviously, winning at a program like this with historic struggles won’t be easy for any new hire and the administration at Columbia has their work cut out for them. The ideal candidate is someone who can maneuver the difficulties of recruiting in the Ivy League, perhaps with prior experience, while also demonstrating the ability to run this program. Can the Lions find someone to eventually end that half-century long drought?