M. B-Ballers Lose to Cornell

It was supposed to end this way.

On Saturday night, the last game at Briggs cage for Tarik Campbell, captain of the Harvard men's basketball team, the Crimson fell to the Big Red of Cornell, 62-60.

Harvard had a chance to win at the end of the game when Cornell's Zeke Marshall missed a free throw with :07 left to play. Campbell pushed the ball up the floor, but was hounded by the Cornell defense and was only able to throw up an air ball.

"It was designed to go down the right sideline," Campbell (11 points, nine assists) said. "James [White] was supposed to clear out the lane, but the defense came on me. I was just trying to get off a shot."

"It's a tough finish for him," Harvard Coach Frank Sullivan said. "It would have been great for him to score that final shot."

Missed shots plagued the Crimson all night. Harvard only shot 38.7 percent from the field for the game.

"Shooting is something you can't control," junior James White said. Sometimes it's going to be there, sometimes it's not."

In the first half especially, it was not there. The Crimson could only shoot 31.3 percent in the first 20 minutes of the game, and trailed the Big Red at the break, 30-25.

"A lot of shots I would have made in my sleep I missed in the first half," sophomore Mike Gilmore (17 points, five rebounds) said. Gilmore shot a woeful one-for-seven in the first half.

The slow start was nothing new for the Crimson.

"[The slow starts] have been more than we would anticipate at the end of the year," Sullivan said. "I don't know what to pin it on, but we've always managed to come back from it."

In the second half, Harvard did just that. As a team, the Crimson shot a respectable 46.7 percent from the field, and only 4:36 into the half, Harvard opened up a 38-34 lead.

But the lead did not hold, Just as Harvard stormed back from the five-point deficit, Cornell quickly went on a 12-4 run and built up a 49-42 advantage.

The streaky play was cause for concern for the Crimson all night.

"We knew what we had to do," Gilmore said. "We just didn't execute."

"At times we were ticking well," sophomore Darren Rankin (10 points, five rebounds) said, "[When we weren't] a lot had to do with the way they played the post--they kept pushing us and pushing us."

The inside play was physical all night. At one point in the first half, it caused junior Fred Scott (five points, nine rebounds) and Cornell's Darth Vaughn to get into a staring match in the first half.

"We're not going to back down," Scott said. "It wasn't personal--I shook hands with him after the game."

And the Crimson did not back down. Harvard came back from the 49-42 deficit to again capture the lead, 52-51, with 6:00 to play in the game.

But in the end, Harvard lost, much of which was due to poor free throw shooting in the final minutes. After Harvard gained the 52-51 lead, it only hit three of its next eight free throws.

"In any second half situation, [free throws] have to be made," Sullivan said.

Harvard closes out its season next weekend when it travels to Yale and Brown.

"We are still in the hunt for third place [in the lvy League]," White said. "If we can get Brown and Yale next weekend and get help from Dartmouth--we haven't given up."

In the loss, there was a bright spot for the Crimson, Midway through the second half, Campbell captured the Harvard all-time assist record with 561.