Scott Steps Up

It certainly looked like a prescription for disaster.

Playing its third game in four days, this one without junior point guard Tim Hill, the Harvard men's basketball team met the Colgate Red Raiders and reigning Patriot League Player of the Week Seth Schaeffer last night at Lavietes Pavilion.

Disastrous, until senior forward Mike Scott decided to remind the Crimson faithful why he's the captain.

Scott notched a career-high 26 points on 10-of-13 shooting, grabbed eight rebounds and stifled Schaeffer in the second half, leading the Crimson (10-10, 3-5 Ivy) to a 72-66 victory to break a five-game skid.

"Seth Schaeffer has been on Mike Scott's mind for the last two days," said Harvard Coach Frank Sullivan. "I thought he guarded Schaeffer well, and for him to come through with the scoring effort that he did is outstanding."

Junior center Paul Fisher added a career-high 18 points and nine rebounds to lock up the interior game as the Crimson handed the Raiders (8-14, 4-5 Patriot League) their third straight loss, winning the battle of the boards 45-31.

"Our game plan was to get the ball inside," Scott said. "Colgate isn't a team that prides itself on defense, and we just ran our sets. We worked the inside-outside game well."

The Red Raiders burned the Crimson out of the blocks, taking a 24-14 lead midway through the half as sophomore guard Damian Long and junior shooting guard Mike Beam struggled to pick up Hill's slack at the point.

Harvard's primary offensive options went cold early. Fisher shot 2-of-7 from the paint while turning the ball over five times. Beam, meanwhile, was atypically cold from distance, hitting only 2-of-10 and missing three treys.

Scott almost single-handedly kept the Crimson in business, collecting 15 points on near-perfect 7-of-8 shooting, while tailing Schaeffer tirelessly around the defensive end in man-to-man coverage.

"There's no question we were out of sync in the first half. Hill's made 72 starts and played 38 minutes in each," Sullivan said. "I thought Fisher had good looks but didn't finish, and Beam, uncharacteristically, shot badly."

After hanging with bad breaks for one half, Harvard happily found itself down only five at the intermission, 31-26.

While Colgate consistently mixed the defensive package on Scott, going man-to-man with point guard Chester Felts and power forward Chad Wiswall, the forward took matters into his own hands, sparking a second-half bounceback.

Down 41-38 early in the half, Scott started a 10-2 run that gave the Crimson the lead for keeps with a slashing drive down the left side, drawing a foul and converting on the three-point play.

On the ensuing possession, Beam brought the ball down the right wing, and found Scott sliding off a pick at the high post. Scott took the pass and hit a fadeaway jumper in traffic to pull Harvard ahead at 43-41.

Scott, by then a full-fledged resident of the zone, drained a three from the right corner and dished unselfishly to Fisher in the paint off a baseline drive.

"They were just set plays," Scott said. "But it had been a while since we'd had a second-half lead."

As Fisher found his touch inside for 10 points and junior forward Bill Ewing collected five of his seven rebounds, Schaeffer fell victim to Scott's pressure and watched the Raider offense collapse around him.

Forced into a number of low-percentage distance shots, Schaeffer managed only eight points on 2-of-7 shooting and the Crimson hung on, sealing the deal with clutch free-throw shooting down the stretch, finishing 19-of-26 in the second half.

"I thought it was a good, strong effort tonight," Sullivan said. "There was a lot of pressure on Long and Beam to step up, and there was a big fatigue factor. It was commendable that they came through the way they did."

Harvard will take a well-deserved week off before returning to Lavietes for Ivy contests against Cornell and Columbia next weekend.

Hill, who sat with a blood blister on his right foot, and Clemente, who missed his third straight with a twisted ankle, are both questionable for this weekend's action.