​Without head coach Megan Griffith on the sidelines for its first three games of the season, the Columbia women’s basketball team didn’t just survive — it thrived.The Lions went 3-0 against Davidson, Rhode Island and Belmont, a trio of squads that ranked in the top 110 of NET last year, a metric the NCAA uses to sort teams. Columbia won those games by an average margin of 13.3 points with associate coach Tyler Cordell making the in-game decisions and adjustments.“Yeah, she should just take my job,” Griffith said with a laugh during a Zoom call with reporters. “What I loved about it was how she just jumped right into it. I think Ty really understood the game planning aspect from my standpoint and how I think about it, and she put her spin on it. Which for her, that is so easy because she built the program with me.”Griffith is now back on the sidelines for Columbia following a three-game suspension, returning to the lead chair on the bench for perhaps the toughest stretch of the Lions’ schedule. On Thursday, Nov. 12, they’ll host No. 2 Michigan at Levien Gymnasium in New York City, travel to No. 18 Maryland on Sunday, Nov. 15, then host No. 5 Duke on Saturday, Nov. 21.Columbia announced it was suspending Griffith — an alum of the Ivy League institution who is in her 10th season leading the Lions — in October following a review of the program by an outside firm after the university received a complaint about her behavior during practices from past seasons.In a statement, Columbia said the review did not require notice to the NCAA of any rules violations and did not involve any allegations of violations of the university’s anti-discrimination policies, Title IX or related policies. According to the statement, “Griffith expressed regret for the times in which her interactions with the team did not align with the university’s expectations.”USA TODAY Sports was provided with a statement from current Columbia players, too. They said they “fully stand with and support” Griffith and that the complaint was “not indicative of our experience as part of this program.”During a call with reporters on Tuesday, Nov. 10, Griffith didn’t discuss the reasoning behind her suspension, but talked about the positives that she took away from it.“What a unique experience this has been. The biggest benefit was, I think, bringing my staff into how I game plan and think about the game, bringing our players more deeply into it, and then I got to watch a lot and coach the details of the game in a very different way,” Griffith said. “I got to observe from a very different vantage point of a game. And obviously, that’s not what I wanted. You want to be with your team, right?“But it was a great opportunity to learn in a different way, and I think our team and my staff did a phenomenal job of stepping up and battling together.”Griffith, 41, played at Columbia from 2003-2007 and was a two-time All-Ivy League selection. After playing professio