M. Cagers: N.Y. State of Mind

The Harvard men's basketball team hopes to rebound from last weekend's losses to Penn and Princeton with road games in New York against Cornell (13-7, 5-3 Ivy) tonight and Columbia (6-14, 1-7) tomorrow.

Cornell and Columbia pose big outside threats, so facing two perimeter-oriented opponents, Harvard (12-8, 5-3) hopes to play tough defense against their three-point shooters.

"Cornell is an excellent three-point shooting team," sophomore Tim Hill said. "Columbia is the same way. Cornell has good inside players as well."

One such player, senior John McCord, presents an additional problem. McCord was injured in the first matchup between the two teams but scored 18 points in 22 minutes.

"We dodged a bullet a little with regard to his presence," coach Frank Sullivan said. "McCord is one of the top big men in the league."

The forward is second to Harvard senior Kyle Snowden in league rebounding. Because of his limited playing time when the teams first met, McCord had only four rebounds.

McCord and three-point specialist Alex Compton provide a strong, experienced inside-out combination for Cornell. Compton is currently shooting 49 percent from behind the line.

However, Harvard limited Compton to making one of four three-pointers in their first outing and only five points total.

"We defended well against him," Snowden said. "We took away a lot of his three-point looks," Snowden said.

The Big Red also boasts one of the league's top shot-blockers in Jeff Autry.

"He's put on weight, added muscle, and is playing real well right now," Hill said.

Harvard will need a repeat of its quality performance against Compton tonight, but the team must also rotate from the weak side to prevent McCord from receiving lob passes.

"If we don't prevent [the lobs down low], he gets the easy layup," Hill said. "He got too many easy baskets when he played at our place."

When the Crimson travels to Columbia tomorrow, it will face the league's leading scorer in C.J. Thompkins. At 43 percent from beyond the arc, Thompkins is comparable to Compton.

"Thompkins is unquestionably one of the best perimeter players in the league," Sullivan said.

Harvard held Thompkins to 18 points, including a 1-for-9 effort on three-pointers, back in January.

Columbia has shot almost 200 more threes than its opponents and three-point attempts have comprised over half of the Lions' shots.

In a victory over Yale at New Haven this week, Columbia connected on 15 of 20 attempts from behind the perimeter. The next night, the Lions made ten threes against Brown.

"If we take their three-point shooting away, we'll be in a good position to win the game," senior captain Dave Demian said.

Harvard is currently tied with Cornell for fourth place in the league.

"We need to put emphasis on being better on defense," Sullivan said. "We struggled to guard Penn and Princeton with consistency over 40 minutes [last weekend]. We were frustrated with our defense, and this was compounded on offense. We were pressing to make shots."

Before the two weekend losses, however, Harvard had held six of seven opponents to under 40 percent shooting.

"We came out flat against Penn and Princeton," Snowden said.

However, Harvard is a balanced team that can score in a variety of different ways. Harvard is holding its opponents to 60 points per game and is getting to the line more often.

"We've had good practices all week," Snowden said. "Now we've got to get back to work.