M. Hoops' Chemistry Improved in Defeat

The elements were there. Flashes of the easy layups, the thunderous dunks and the fluid cuts to the basket that characterized the Harvard offense during the Elliott Prasse-Freeman ’03 era were easily discernible in the Crimson’s matchup with Brown on Friday night.

Harvard fell well short of matching the Bears shot-for-shot, possession-for-possession in falling 91-67. But that didn’t matter. In a season that will be defined less by wins and losses and more by team growth, the Crimson took a giant step forward.

For once, Harvard wasn’t looking for one person to step up on the offensive end of the floor, but rather worked together to find looks that it hadn’t been able to create all season.

Trailing 28-16 with 6:08 remaining before halftime, sophomore power forward Matt Stehle received the ball in the post, turned and dished it to sophomore forward Luke McCrone, who skied to finish his cut down the lane. The Crimson closed out the half with three more assists against just one turnover, but could not keep pace with Brown and faced a 44-31 halftime deficit.

The Harvard offense continued to click coming out of the break, as Stehle hit sophomore point guard Michael Beal for an easy layup.

Two possessions later, junior shooting guard Kevin Rogus hit junior center Graham Beatty, who turned toward the hoop, took a dribble and slammed the ball home.

“[Graham’s dunk] was good to see,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. “Luke had one, too. You see those in practice, and it’s really good to see those guys attack the rim like that.”

“That’s what [Graham] needs to do,” Beal said. “He needs to attack the rim…It’s on us to get him the ball more, and it’s on him to really take advantage of his strength.”

Just 3:31 later, junior guard David Giovacchini hit freshman guard Jim Goffredo on a backdoor cut that Goffredo finished for an easy layup.

Just over six minutes into the second half, the Crimson had scored 12 points, with eight of those coming on four assists. Yet, it still wasn’t enough to keep pace with Brown, which dropped 15 points on Harvard in the same span.

The Crimson didn’t abandon its new team-oriented offensive approach, even in the face of the Bears’ high-powered offense.

Brown pushed its lead to 19 with 12:26 remaining, but Harvard responded with a deliberate pace on offense as Giovacchini found Goffredo once again on a backdoor cut, which the freshman finished with another easy layup.

“We got some good momentum with our back cutting,” Sullivan said. “Goffredo received a couple good passes on back cuts and we talked about not being stationary and sharing the ball some more.”

Facing its biggest deficit of the contest—26 with just 4:06 left—the Crimson could have gone back to the one-man show theory it had adopted for the greater portion of the season.

But a characteristic baseline drive by junior captain Jason Norman was finished off by an uncharacteristic dish around the defender to a wide-open Stehle, who tallied another easy layup for the Crimson.

Harvard finished with 16 assists on the night. The more impressive figure to consider is that 10 of those led directly to a layup or dunk.

“We’re trying to get more assists,” Beal said. “We’ve had a lot of turnovers and not enough assists, so we’re just trying to move the ball around...and look for each other.”

After spending the first 16 minutes of the game building up an abysmal three-to-nine assist-to-turnover ratio, the Crimson had 13 assists and only eight turnovers the rest of the way, leading to its second-best ratio all season.

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