M. Hoops Closes Out a Fourth Consecutive 7-7 Ivy Season

Captain Andrew Gellert stripped an opponent for the last time. Senior center Tim Coleman grabbed his final rebound. With a 92-83 loss to Brown on Saturday night, the Harvard men’s basketball team’s season—and Gellert’s and Coleman’s careers—came to a close.

The loss came on the heels of a 77-72 defeat at Yale on Friday, and dropped the Crimson (14-12, 7-7) to fifth place in the final Ivy standings.

“We really came out with a lot of intensity for Drew and Tim,” junior guard Brady Merchant said. “We felt they should go out with some wins.”

Coleman’s final weekend in a Crimson uniform was a big one. He followed up a 15-point, eight-rebound effort against the Elis by leading all scorers in the Brown game with 20 points. Coleman also posted a team-high nine rebounds against the Bears.

Gellert had a quieter career-capping weekend, but according to teammates, that’s what makes him special.

“Drew will be really hard to replace,” junior forward Sam Winter said. “He’s such a great defender, and he’ such a great leader. It’ll be harder to make up for that than the tangible things like steals and scoring.”

It was the fourth consecutive season that Harvard finished with a 7-7 league mark.

Brown 92, Harvard 83

Led by freshman guard Jason Forte’s 17-point performance, the Bears (17-10, 8-6) tied the school record for most wins in a season and clinched sole possession of fourth place in the Ivy League standings in front of 1,573 at the Pizzitola Sports Center on Saturday.

The Crimson went on a 12-3 second-half run to pull the score to 80-76 with just over two minutes remaining in the game, but Brown stepped it up down the stretch. The Bears sunk seven-of-eight free throws in the final two minutes to ice the victory.

“We felt confident that we could make a run on them at the end of the game especially because we had jumped out so early in the game,” Merchant said.

After racing to an early 10-2 lead, Harvard controlled the game for the majority of the first half. A pair of three-pointers from junior guard Patrick Harvey gave the Crimson a 34-28 lead with five minutes to play in the first half, but the Bears seized the momentum, going on a 18-6 run to enter the half with a 46-40 lead.

Harvey and junior point guard Elliott Prasse-Freeman finished the game with 17 points each, while Coleman posted 20. It was just the fourth time this season that Harvey did not lead Harvard in scoring.

Junior forward Earl Hunt added 16 points for the Bears, with 12 points coming on 4-of-4 shooting from behind the arc. Senior forward Shaun Etheridge, playing in his final game, scored all 12 of his points in the second half for Brown.

The only other time that the Bears posted 17 wins in a season was 1985-1986, the year that Brown won its only Ivy League title.

Yale 77, Harvard 72

Playing in front of a rowdy crowd with everything on the line, Yale (18-8, 10-3) did what it needed to to down the Crimson and remain alive in the closest title race in Ivy League history.

Down 75-72 with time running out, Merchant’s three-point attempt failed with 0:09 on the clock. Yale junior guard Ime Archibong then sank two free throws to clinch the win. Archibong made 11 of 12 free throws for the game.

Though the Crimson was not part of the Ivy title hunt, the players said that the motivation to beat Yale was still there.

“They obviously had a lot more to play for,” Winter said. “But we felt like we owed them from that last game. We felt like if we won there, we could really make some noise [in the league].”

Harvard almost did.

After falling behind 44-34 going into the break, the Crimson’s shots began to fall in the second half. With 15:06 remaining in the game, Harvey stole the ball from Yale sophomore guard Matt Minoff and drained a jumper to cap a 15-6 run and pull Harvard within one, 50-49.

The game stayed close through the next ten minutes, with the Crimson taking its first lead of the game, 63-61, on a layup by freshman guard Jason Norman with 6:01 remaining.

Winter led four Harvard players in double digits with 17 points. Coleman posted 15 and Harvey and Prasse-Freeman chipped in 11 each.

Winter said that the intense atmosphere of Yale’s Lee Amphitheatre may have contributed to his point total.

“I honestly love playing against a team where they have a wild crowd,” Winter said. “It’s easy to keep your energy up.”

The Bulldogs were led by 17 points from freshman point guard Alex Gamboa.

Yale’s victory over Harvard coupled with its 88-59 thrashing of Dartmouth on Saturday leaves the Ivy League on the verge of a three-team first place tie. If Penn beats Princeton at the Palestra on Tuesday, each of the three teams will have identical 11-3 conference marks, and there will be the first three-team playoff in league history.

—Staff writer Daniel E. Fernandez contributed to the reporting of this article.