Revitalized Bulldogs Shake Up Ivies

The Harvard men’s basketball team returns to Lavietes Pavilion tonight after nearly earning a split of the difficult Penn-Princeton road trip for the first time in thirteen years.

Brown and Yale will look to continue their push toward the top of the Ivy standings as they take on the Crimson (2-17, 1-5 Ivy) tonight and tomorrow, respectively.

Yale (8-11, 3-3) took the nation by storm to start the season, carrying a lead into the halftime break against then-No. 1 Connecticut in Storrs before falling 70-60. The Bulldogs won four of their next five, with the only loss coming against then-No. 18 Wake Forest, 86-61.

But the hottest team in the Ivies quickly came unglued, dropping its next six contests heading into conference play.

After being swept in its first two Ivy games in a home-and-home series against Brown (8-11, 4-2), Yale sat at 0-2 with weekend visits from Penn and Princeton looming on the horizon. Many had already signed the Bulldogs’ death warrant, relegating a team that was picked by some to win the Ivy League to virtual elimination before the calendar even turned to February.

Yale had a different idea, shaking off an eight-game losing streak against Division I teams to edge the Quakers, 54-52, before falling to the Tigers, 49-47. At 1-3, the Bulldogs weren’t in great shape, but they had survived a weekend with the “Ivy Undertakers”—Penn and Princeton.

Yale continued its march back to contention last weekend with home wins over Columbia and league frontrunner Cornell to move to 3-3 in the Ivies—two games back of the Big Red.

The Bulldogs’ recent turnaround began at the defensive end of the floor. Yale has held its last four opponents to an average of 51.75 points per game and 37.7-percent shooting from the floor. The Bulldogs’ most impressive defensive performance came last Saturday, as it held Cornell to just 48 points—half of the total the Big Red had put up the night before in a win at Brown.

“Obviously, they’re playing great defense right now,” said junior captain Jason Norman. “We need to execute our offense because right now we have a horrible [194-to-371] assist-to-turnover ratio.”

But whether Yale is poised to make a run at the league’s leaders should become clear this weekend, as the Bulldogs begin their season-ending stretch of six road contests in eight games.

The same is true for Yale’s travel partner Brown, but the Bears’ sweep of the Bulldogs puts them in slightly better shape heading down the stretch. With only two conference losses, Brown controls its own destiny and can force at least a playoff if it wins out.

After starting the season just 2-9 against Division I opponents, the Bears have found their rhythm at the right time, winning six out of their last eight.

With difficult showdowns on the road at Penn and Princeton next week, Brown and Yale might be tempted to look ahead instead of focus on the Crimson. But Harvard’s 1-5 mark in the Ivies doesn’t quite tell the whole story.

“With the exception of the Penn game, our record really doesn’t indicate how well we’ve played,” said sophomore power forward Matt Stehle.

In losses to Dartmouth, Cornell and Columbia, Harvard held double-digit leads before foul trouble restricted the Crimson’s personnel options and destroyed its rhythm. In last weekend’s double-overtime loss at Princeton, Harvard held a six-point lead with under eight minutes remaining in regulation before the Tigers came back to force overtime.

“Right now, we’re just having trouble playing like we can for a full 40 minutes,” Stehle said. “At Princeton, we came close, but in the last two minutes we had a couple of turnovers. Against Cornell, we dominated for 30 to 32 minutes.”

Once again, the keys to this weekend’s games for Harvard will be playing strong defense and avoiding foul trouble. Stehle and sophomore point guard Michael Beal lead the team with 3.8 and 3.5 fouls per game, respectively. As a unit, Harvard commits 21.5 fouls per game, placing it second in the Ivies.

“It hurts the team a lot when we get in foul trouble,” Norman said. “Sometimes it’s officiating, sometimes it’s us. We’re concerned, but we don’t want people to soften up.”

Against Brown, the defensive effort will center on stopping Jason Forte, the third-leading scorer in the Ivy League. Last weekend Forte put together two monster games, dropping 30 points on Cornell and 23 on Columbia. He also added 14 assists on the weekend.

“He’s one of the best players in the league,” Norman said. “His game is getting to the basket, getting to the free-throw line. It’ll be a challenge for whoever guards him.”

Forte leads a prolific Bear offense that has topped 80 points in each of its last three games.

“They run a motion offense, and we have had some trouble in the past against the motion offense,” Stehle said. “The key will be keeping the ball out of the middle.”

Yale will provide a bit of a change-up in terms of defensive matchups, as the Bulldogs’ leading scorer is center Dominick Martin. Crimson junior center Graham Beatty faces the challenge of containing Martin while avoiding the foul trouble that plagued him last Saturday against Princeton’s Judson Wallace.

Harvard must also be concerned with Yale’s dangerous perimeter players—guards Edwin Draughan and Alex Gamboa. Gamboa scored 16 against Cornell last Saturday, and Draughan comes into the weekend averaging 11.6 points per game.

“We can’t focus on one particular person because [Yale] is so balanced,” Stehle said. “We’ll need to play great one-on-one defense and collapse on the low post, because they have such a good low post player [in Martin].”

—Staff writer Michael R. James can be reached at mrjames@fas.harvard.edu. /