Who Needs Those Big Men?

Interesting point from last night's Harvard men's basketball game: Senior forward Kyle Snowden, the team's leading scorer, had one shot in the first half. But Harvard was leading Brown 34-28 at the break.

Huh? Harvard winning a game without Snowden? Couldn't be.

Sure enough, the Crimson won its fifth game in a row without a big-time performance from the big guy, thanks to some good defense and a great game from its backcourt.

The defense is nothing new. Harvard coach Frank Sullivan's top priority for any game has always been to hold the opponent under 40 percent from the field. The Crimson did well in that regard, keeping the Bears at 38.5 percent for the game. That has been the rule in Harvard's recent winning streak, as neither Lehigh, Cornell, Columbia or Dartmouth ever got hot offensively.

However, the outside shooting has often been noticeably absent. Against Lehigh, for instance, Harvard only hit 10 out of 36 shots in the first half as the two teams waddled to a 27-27 halftime tie. On the season, the Crimson's two leading scorers are big men (Snowden and senior Chris Grancio), and besides sophomore point guard Tim Hill, no one else averages more than eight points a game.

Yesterday, the backcourt came alive. Captain Dave Demian scored the team's first eight points on the night, draining two three-pointers and a running flip-shot. Hill and junior Mike Scott had five buckets each, tied for the team lead with Snowden, and senior Dave Weaver added two three-pointers.

In all, Snowden and Grancio combined for 18 points, 28 percent of Harvard's total. Before last night, the season average for that figure was 42 percent.

Hey, who needs those big guys anyway?

In truth, the backcourt was aided by Brown's decision to come out with a zone defense, in effect daring Harvard to pass-and-shoot. But the Crimson was able to shoot from the outside and the Bears learned that playing a zone meant that a six-foot guard would be covering the 6'8" Grancio--the team's most proficient three-point shooter--on the outside.

"We had some driving lanes and quick transitions," Demian said. "We just lost track of [Snowden] on our offense."

So, in the second half, Brown shelved the zone, which freed up Snowden for eight points. Brown's hopes were quashed by Scott's layups, Hill's assists (seven on the game) and Snowden.

Last night, Kyle Snowden helped Harvard win. He led the team with eight rebounds and scored 10 points. But Tim Hill (15 points) and Mike Scott (14 points) also helped a lot, too.

Next weekend, Harvard runs the gauntlet of road games at Penn and Princeton, who have won every Ivy League title since the Mesozoic Period. To win there, the Crimson will need all of its players to play well-so well that anyone on the court deserves to get the ball on each possession. The Crimson need to play a game like the one seen last night.