Men's Basketballers Beat Columbia to Bloody Pulp, 93-61

The Harvard men's basketball team is one of the happiest 6-20 teams around. Columbia  61 Harvard  93

Not many squads with more than three times as many losses as wins are lucky enough to give their seasons a good closure. But the Crimson (6-20 overall, 4-10 Ivy) blew out its last two opponents of the year-first with a 80-63 win over Cornell on Friday and then with a 93-61 mauling of Columbia (4-22, 1-13) on Saturday.

So what if Harvard's not going to get an NIT bid?

For the first time in 18 years, the Crimson has swept the last weekend of the season--by a combined 49 points, to boot. The 32-point win was Harvard's largest margin of victory against a Division I opponent in 20 years.

"I guess we're starting a winning tradition," captain Jared Leake (five points, four assists) said. "This way the seniors can go out with a bang."

Up until the month of March, the Crimson was plagued with inconsistency. The team would play well and take a lead but then would invariably lose its concentration and watch a victory slip away.

Saturday night was the exact opposite of that. The first half was rather ugly, as neither team shot better than 40 percent from the floor, and the Lions scored more points off free throws than field goals, due to 14 Harvard fouls. The Crimson led 39-34 at the break.

"The first half was difficult because so many fouls were being called," Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. "It's hard to get any sort of rhythm going."

But come the second-half buzzer, that all changed. Perhaps the extended halftime that honored Harvard's departing seniors gave the Crimson enough time to be super-charged, or maybe the flowers and applause given to the five seniors psychologically picked up the team.

Whatever the case, once play resumed, Harvard kicked butt.

Two buckets from sophomore center Kyle Snowden (21 points, 12 rebounds), two three-pointers from junior forward Mike Gilmore (10 points) and a layup by senior point guard Dan Morris (four points) combined for a 12-2 Crimson run from which it would never look back.

"I guess the flowers just energized me," Leake quipped.

The floodgates would never close. With 11:53 to go and Harvard up 58-41, Columbia called its third timeout of the game (Sullivan never felt the need to call time, which must be some sort of Harvard record). It didn't work--Snowden dunked off a fast break and would personally outscore Columbia over the next 2:35 of play.

Harvard was pretty streaky for the rest of the game, in the sense that different Crimson players took over the game.

After Snowden, it was freshman swingman Mike Scott, who set one career-high mark (six rebounds) and equalled another (17 points). He responded to a three-pointer by Columbia's Fred Johnson with a trey and a three-point play to give Harvard a 73-47 advantage.

Then it was senior guard James White (14 points) with a three-pointer and a pass to senior center Paul Kubiak (career-high six points) for a crashing alley-oop dunk.

At this point in the game, Sullivan rightly put all five of the seniors in Leake, Kubiak, Morris, White and center Kevin Fricka. They would stay in until the final two minutes, when each came out one-by-one for a classy standing ovation.

Hey, when the game's a blowout, you can have fun.

"All I know is that this meant a lot to the seniors," Scott said. "They have tried to instill [a winning mentality] in us so that we wouldn't go through what they went through for four years. Hopefully these two games will turn it around."

A game like this could turn the Exxon Valdez around. Look at the turnovers--21 for Columbia and eight for Harvard. Or the assists--eight to 20, respectively. Or how about the rebounds--34 to 49. There is no way to overestimate how badly the Lions were pummeled on Saturday.

What happened to Columbia was the same thing that has happened to Harvard 20 times this year--the Lions were utterly demoralized. It's not a pretty thing to see, but it's about time that the Crimson was on the giving end and not the receiving.

"There was a lot of emotion, seeing the seniors leaving," Snowden said. "It's the most fun I've ever had on the court."

HARVARD, 93-61 at Briggs Cage Columbia34  27  --  61 Harvard  39  54  --  93

COLUMBIA: Curry 0-1 0-0 0; Johnson 2-8 2-2 8; Lozner 0-1 0-0 0; Fuchs 4-7 2-2 10; Twer 1-2 5-5 7; Watkins 0-2 0-2 0; Doyle 2-9 3-5 8; Tubridy 4-9 5-5 13; Piskun 4-9 5-6 13; Worly 0-1 2-2 2. TOTALS 17-49 24-29 61.

HARVARD: Demian 2-8 0-0 5; Leake 2-3 1-2 5; Gilmore 3-7 1-2 10; Morris 2-6 0-1 4; M. Scott 5-8 5-5 17; Snowden 9-14 3-7 21; Grancio 0-3 0-0 0; Kubiak 3-6 0-0 6; Fisher 2-8 2-2 6; Ju White 4-10 4-4 14; Fricka 1-3 3-4 5. TOTALS: 33-76 19-27 93.