Threes Charm M. Hoops in Triple OT

Up three at the end of the first half, the Harvard men’s basketball team blazed out of the locker room to start the second, going on an 11-2 run, which stretched its lead to 12 over Rider (2-3). With 14:22 remaining in regulation time, the Crimson squad appeared to be in complete control.

It wasn’t.

When the dust finally settled after three overtime periods, an additional 105 points had been scored since that 14:22 mark.

Harvard may have escaped 85-82, but it required all 17 three-point field goals and 41 attempts from behind the arc—both school records—to do so.

The last trey, senior Elliott Prasse-Freeman’s game-winner with 1:17 remaining, finally put the game away for good.

The Crimson (4-2) almost missed a chance at a third overtime.

Two Broncs free throws with six seconds left in double overtime extended the Crimson deficit to three.

With one second to go, senior guard Pat Harvey caught Prasse-Freeman’s pass and knocked down a trifecta to send the game to yet another extra session.

But this scene was an eerie flashback to just minutes earlier. Harvey had done it only five minutes before to force a second overtime.

While Harvey’s shots saved the game for the Crimson, his efforts would have been for naught without the career-best performance of captain Brady Merchant.

Merchant, Harvard’s leading scorer this season, posted a career-high 25 points, most of which came from his school record-tying seven three-point field goals in 47 minutes.

More important than the quantity of Merchant’s buckets was their timeliness. Each time the game looked as though it were about to fall apart for the Crimson, he was the one who held the effort together.

In the second half, with Rider edging closer to the Crimson, the shooting guard knocked down a three-pointer to re-establish the lead at nine with 4:29 to play.

When Harvard fell behind by seven points in the first overtime, a Merchant trey brought the team within striking distance at 2:45, setting up Harvey’s first game-extending three.

In the final overtime, with each team battling fatigue and struggling to score, it was Merchant who put down a three with 2:27 to go, breaking a span of more than two minutes for both teams without a field goal and giving Harvard the momentum.

Complementing his effort were Harvey and Prasse-Freeman.

Harvey dropped in 22 points during his 50 minutes on the hardwood, launching 14 three-pointers of his own and hitting four of them—including the two game-saving goals.

Prasse-Freeman flirted with a triple-double as the game progressed, dishing out 11 assists, grabbing eight rebounds and scoring 14 points.

With 1:13 remaining in the third overtime, Prasse-Freeman sent the 17th trifecta splashing through the hoop, putting the Crimson up three—finally for good. The shot set a new Harvard team record for three-pointers.

While the Crimson lived and died last night by the trey, such a strategy would have yielded disaster were it not for Harvard’s dominance of the glass.

In the first overtime, down seven, the Crimson tried to catch the Broncs by attempting eight three-point shots. While only two of them found the bottom of the net, nine offensive rebounds allowed Harvard to dominate possession for the final three minutes of the overtime, eventually setting up Harvey’s game-saving shot.

Seniors Brian Sigafoos and Sam Winter compiled 25 rebounds—ten of which were on the offensive glass—prior to fouling out.

And just as solid rebounding saved the Crimson from defeat, poor shooting nearly prevented victory.

Harvard proved weakest at the foul line, struggling to draw the fouls needed to get to the stripe at the beginning of the game—and not reaching it until more than six and a half minutes into the second half. On the evening, the Crimson shot 52.6 perfect from the foul line and only 50 percent in overtime.

From the field, Harvard struggled during the first half and the overtime periods, converting on 29 percent and 25 percent of its shots, respectively.

In the second half, the Crimson converted on half of its attempts—including two-thirds of its shots from three-point land—boosting its overall shot percentage to 34.1 percent and hiding its streaky shooting.

Harvard also overcame 21 turnovers in winning the game, six of which were attributable to Prasse-Freeman.

The Crimson returns to the court in Hamilton, NY, on Friday night against Colgate.