Notebook: Finally, Harvard Has Mental Edge

When Harvard’s Elliott Prasse-Freeman talks about “mental toughness,” he probably has games like Saturday’s 78-75 overtime victory over Penn in mind.

The matter-of-fact resilience displayed by the Harvard men’s basketball team Saturday night—first in forgetting a heartbreaking defeat to Princeton the night before, then in overcoming a 14-0 second-half run by Penn—is exactly what the junior point guard has always predicted would be the proof that Harvard had finally come of age.

Last year a crushing two-point loss to Princeton sent Harvard reeling, as the Crimson dropped its next four games.

“We did not respond well to the loss,” Prasse-Freeman said last week. “It was really a product of us not being mentally tough.”

Saturday’s game brought out a different side of this Harvard club. The Crimson’s 50-48 loss to Princeton on Friday—which ended abruptly with a game-tying leaner by junior Sam Winter falling just short—seemed like the furthest thing from the team’s minds.

And when Penn reeled off 14 unanswered points to take a six point lead in the second half, the Crimson didn’t let that bother them in the least. In fact, they hardly even realized it.

During the postgame press conference, junior guard Patrick Harvey expressed genuine surprise when he was asked what the team’s confidence was like after the Quaker spurt.

“They had a 14-0 run on us?” he asked. “Really?”

Harvard probably didn’t notice because it was busy preparing a run of their own. In the second half, from the 10:42 mark on, whenever Penn hit a big basket, Harvard responded in kind. By the waning minutes of overtime, it was Harvard that appeared the more composed of the two teams.

“They outtoughed us. They didn’t get down from adversity. They picked themselves up and made a great comeback,” Penn Coach Fran Dunphy said.

The next test for Harvard will be to see how well it fares on the road. Always a strong team inside Lavietes Pavilion, Harvard has historically struggled to win away from home. But that’s what is necessary to make a run at an Ivy title, and it will require the kind of disciplined approach Harvard showed Satruday.

Captain Marvel

Perhaps intrigued by the fact that Dartmouth guard Flinder Boyd had lit up Penn for 24 points the night before, Harvard’s guards made a concerted effort to take the ball strong inside on Saturday.

Boyd had been shut down by Harvard captain Drew Gellert at Lavietes Pavilion earlier this season, but his success against the Quakers may have hinted at a flaw in Penn’s backcourt defense.

Harvard exploited that weak perimeter presence Saturday, as Harvey, Gellert and even freshman reserve Jason Norman had repeated success driving through the lane.

The success was particularly surprising coming from Gellert. Usually known for his defense, Gellert was always a step quicker than his defender Saturday, generating easy layups or at least drawing the foul.

He finished with 15 points, his highest output since scoring 17 in Harvard’s exhibition against St. Francis Xavier in November.

In that game, too, Gellert was able to beat the defense off the dribble.

“We probably didn’t do a good job keeping them out of the lane,” Dunphy admitted. “That’s part of their makeup as a team and we let them loose a little bit.”

Harvard Coach Frank Sullivan said he was pleased by his team’s backcourt offense.

“Other than Pat, we’ve had three perimeter guys shoot less than 40 percent [from the field],” Sullivan said. “As a group tonight, they shot like 52 percent. Penn was making them make plays off the dribble and they responded to it.”

“As the game got on, their confidence taking the ball to the basket really started to increase,” he added.

And for that, Penn paid the ultimate price.

Fading Down the Stretch

Harvard was helped Saturday night by some critical gaffes and, in general, failed execution by Penn in the closing minutes of overtime.

For one thing, Penn’s Andrew Toole—who started for the Quakers on Friday for the first time since sustaining a stress fracture earlier in the year—failed to settle into any kind of rhythm on the floor.

Despite 13 points, he was subbed in and out of the game all night because of too many senseless fouls, which eventually caught up with him in overtime. Toole’s foul on Gellert at the 2:16 mark was his fifth of the game, leaving Penn without its best free-throw shooter—and one of its best three-point marksmen—for the most crucial stretch of the game.

“There’s no question—we need [Toole] out there,” Dunphy said. “He did some foolish things. He’s working his way through. He tries to do a few too many things.”

The Quakers paid the price for Toole’s overaggressiveness when his replacement at the point, David Klatsky, missed two key free throws late in overtime. They were Penn’s first misses from the line all night.

At 50 percent, Klatsky is one of Penn’s worst free throw shooters, and Harvey admitted after the game that Harvard felt safest going after him when it needed to foul.

Though Klatsky managed to grab his own rebound off the second miss, he immediately coughed the ball up to Harvard forward Graham Beatty.

As large as Klatsky’s misses would loom, an even bigger Penn blunder might have been a fumbled defensive rebound by Quaker forward Ugonna Onyekwe earlier in the extra session.

With Penn ahead by one and 3:16 left on the clock, Gellert missed the second of two free throws. The rebound was Onyekwe’s for the taking, but it slipped through his hands and landed out of bounds, giving the ball back to Harvard.

The Crimson took full advantage of the second-chance possession, as Harvey drilled a three to give the Crimson a lead it would never relinquish.

“I thought we had a couple opportunities to close it out,” Dunphy said. “We just did some foolish things. But I give Harvard a great deal of credit.”

Odds and ends

Before Harvey stole the show against Penn, it was junior sixth man Brady Merchant who stoked the Crimson in the first half. The Harvard wing guard struck soon after entering the game, nailing a three that put Harvard up 10-7. He finished the first half as Harvard’s leading scorer with nine points . . .

Even with the start of exams looming, Harvard had its first two sellouts of the year this weekend. Of everyone who packed the gym this weekend, none were louder than four players from last year’s Crimson team. Sophomore Kam Walton, senior Bryan Parker, Alex Lowder ’01 and Dan Clemente ’01 were all in attendance Saturday. It was Clemente, of course, who carried Harvard to its surprise win over Penn last year, scoring 29 points as the Crimson rolled to a upset that snapped the Quakers’ 25-game conference winning streak . . .

With UCLA’s upset over Kansas Saturday, Harvard can now make its claim for the top spot in the new Associated Press top-25 poll. For those to whom the link is not readily apparent, an explanation: earlier this season, UCLA lost to USC. Since then, the Trojans have lost to Fresno State, who lost to Wake Forest, who lost to Syracuse, who lost to Georgia Tech. Penn beat the Yellow Jackets, and, at least until the two teams square off again in Philadelphia, Harvard has Penn’s number.

Let the debate over the nation’s new No. 1 team begin.

—Crimson staff writers Daniel E. Fernandez and Elijah M. Alper contributed to the reporting of this article.