Bears' Seniors Put On Show in Home Finale

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—If you couldn’t tell Saturday night was Senior Night at Brown from the pregame ceremonies, it probably didn’t take you long to figure it out. Four-year players Mike Martin and Jaime Kilburn took—and hit—the Bears’ first five shots as Brown took a 10-4 lead 2:13 into the game.

Kilburn never cooled off, finishing with 17 points on 7-7 shooting, pulling down 14 rebounds and blocking four Harvard shots, while Martin finished with 15 points after a 6-8 performance.

But ultimately, their classmate Patrick Powers outshined both of them, hitting 10 of his 18 shots—including five of 11 threes—for a 27-point, seven-rebound performance.

The winningest class in Bears’ history—with 62 wins and counting—combined for 19 consecutive Brown points during a 3:17 stretch of the first half.

“What we saw tonight was an experienced, hard-nosed, senior-driven team on Senior Night at home playing for the championship of the Ivy League,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. “Unfortunately, we were in the way.”

By the end of the game, some in the crowd were calling for Bears coach Glen Miller to remove his seniors so each could be showered with applause. Miller did eventually pull them—as a group, after calling timeout with 59.6 seconds to play—but then reinserted them with 24.8 seconds left, presumably so they could finish the game as a group.

DEEP TROUBLE

They say practice makes perfect. But in the Crimson’s case, it seems practice just makes shorthanded.

After sophomore forward Zach Martin fractured his hand in practice two weeks ago and sophomore starting point guard Michael Beal tore his medial collateral ligament in practice on Thursday, Sullivan—who had already lost sophomore center Brian Cusworth to a preseason stress fracture—was left with just nine healthy players for this weekend’s games.

Only seven of those had played in at least half of the Crimson’s contests.

Friday night at Yale, the inexperience showed, as Harvard’s bench was outscored 39-7 by the Bulldog reserves.

Yale had 10 players see at least 10 minutes of action, plus Mark Lovett, who played nine minutes.

A total of 15 Bulldogs checked in, with none spending more than 30 minutes on the floor.

In contrast, the Crimson had just seven players play more than five minutes, including four with 29 or more.

“They tried to just try to wear us down, and certainly Mike has been one of our more resilient players in terms of his stamina, so just having him out of the equation hurt us,” Sullivan said. “Their depth really got them over the top in that regard.”

BROWN BREAKS FOR BEARS

Perhaps taking advantage of Harvard’s residual fatigue from the night before, Brown relied on its characteristic up-tempo pace to run the Crimson out of the gym in its win Saturday night.

The Bears finished with 23 fast-break points to Harvard’s two and shot 62.5 percent for the game, including a 69.7-percent first-half performance.

“Our style of game is not exactly fast-paced,” junior shooting guard Kevin Rogus said. “But that’s their style, so we were playing to what they wanted to do.”

“I think that’s one of the things that we kind of didn’t want to happen,” freshman guard Jim Goffredo said. “We kind of let the game get a little too fast for us.”

Point guard Jason Forte, who quarterbacked the Brown attack, finished with 24 points on 6-11 shooting and 10 assists.

“Our average speed and quickness—especially in conversion—shows up when the game goes up and down like that,” Sullivan said.

The night before, Yale had capitalized on 23 Crimson turnovers, converting them into 29 points.

“The obvious story for us was points off turnovers created by Yale,” Sullivan said. “It seemed that theirs were certainly more timely than ours were, certainly at critical points of the game.”

“They converted them and cashed them in as quick as anybody this season,” he added.

—Staff writer Alan G. Ginsberg can be reached at aginsber@fas.harvard.edu.