Inconsistency in Shooting Dooms Harvard Against Tigers

People say that if you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a minute and it will change.

Harvard’s shooting proved equally fickle Friday night at Lavietes Pavilion, as the Crimson followed an ice-cold first-half performance with a scorching streak just after halftime before returning to its early frigidity to close out the game.

Harvard missed its first eight shots, 14 of its first 15, 17 of its first 19 and 18 of its first 21 en route to a woeful 6-29 (20.7 percent) performance in the first half.

But the Crimson seemed like a different team coming out of the break, hitting its first seven shots—including three each by junior captain and small forward Jason Norman and junior shooting guard Kevin Rogus—and nine of its first 10 over the first 7:56 of the second half.

“As poorly as we shot in the first half, the fact that we came in at halftime with single digits as opposed to double digits—and almost at five—kind of gave the guys a little bit of confidence that they could get close again,” said Harvard coach Frank Sullivan.

“They went through a stretch there, starting the latter part of the first half, when they were scoring too easily. It’s as simple as that,” said Princeton coach John Thompson III.

“We just knew we had to buckle down and get stops.”

The hot shooting disappeared just as quickly as it had blown in, however, as Harvard hit just one of its final 15 shots, a Rogus three with 5:53 to play that gave the Crimson a two-point lead at 49-47.

“We couldn’t make shots at critical points in time,” Sullivan said. “Adrenaline being what it is, I think guys were feeling good that they could do almost anything. Well, no, they couldn’t. You need to know that miracles don’t always happen.”

BALL AND SCHAEN

A large part of Harvard’s collapse down the stretch—Princeton finished the night on a 13-1 run, scoring the game’s final nine points—was due to its inability to get sophomore power forward Matt Stehle involved.

Stehle, the ninth-leading scorer and second-most accurate shooter in the Ivy League entering the night, was just 1-9 for the game and took only two second-half shots, missing them both.

“They had Stehle down,” Sullivan said. “As I said to Matt at halftime, ‘They’ve scouted you well. They’re not going for your up-fake. They’re not going to let you slice to the goal like some of the other teams have done.’ So I thought they had a real good sense of how Matt plays and I think he was real bothered by that.”

Much of the credit for neutralizing Stehle goes to Tiger Harrison Schaen.

The lanky, 6’8 freshman used his long arms to prevent Stehle from getting any clear looks in the post as Thompson alternated Schaen and classmate Luke Owings on the defensive and offensive ends of the floor, respectively, down the stretch.

“Harrison, at this point, is a terrific post defender and rebounder,” Thompson said. “He’s going to be a terrific, terrific player here one day.”

“He’s a good leaper,” Sullivan said. “I don’t think anybody really has a bead on him on our team and he made some things happen defensively for them.”

All three of Schaen’s blocks—including two on one possession—came in the final 3:50 of the game, although only one was on a Stehle shot.

Schaen made a game-saving block at the end of the first overtime of the Tigers’ double-overtime victory over the Crimson Feb. 7 at Princeton.

WE DON’T WANT YOUR CHARITY

Despite its difficulties from the floor, the Crimson still had a legitimate chance to knock off the top team in the Ivy League. But Harvard—which was shooting a conference-leading 72.5 percent from the charity stripe entering the night—went cold from the line, shooting just 13-24 (54.2 percent), including 7-16 (45.7 percent) in the second half.

“It certainly hurt us tonight,” Sullivan said. “In similar circumstances with our win at Cornell [Feb. 21], we were making these free throws down the stretch and I think we needed some free-throw shooting tonight certainly. For being a good free-throw shooting team, it’s one of our poorer ones. You wouldn’t think it would happen at home.”

More importantly, many of those misses came at critical times.

After Princeton erased a three-point Crimson advantage with four points in the paint, sophomore forward Luke McCrone had a chance to put Harvard back ahead, but missed both free throws. A minute later, he missed the back end of a one-and-one.

Stehle—who was shooting 73.0 percent from the line entering the night, good for 10th in the conference—had a chance to tie the game with 6:36 to play, but missed the second of his free throws.

Junior center Graham Beatty went to the line with 3:46 to play and a chance to extend Harvard’s two-point advantage, but missed the first before converting the second.

Finally, junior point guard David Giovacchini had a chance to give the Crimson a lead with 1:54 to play, but missed his first shot before hitting the second for Harvard’s final point.

ARC MARK

Rogus’ three trifectas Saturday night gave him 74 for the season, breaking the school record of 73 set by Keith Webster ’87 during the 1986-1987 season.

Rogus missed his first three-point attempt, but hit his 72nd of the season 6:15 into the game, giving the Crimson a 12-11 lead.

Rogus then missed his next four shots from three-point range—including one that would have brought Harvard within one 24 seconds before halftime and another that was blocked by Penn’s Jeff Schiffner—but tied the record with 5:26 to play and then broke it 1:14 later on his last shot of the game.

“I went through a stretch there of about 10 minutes where I didn’t do anything productive,” Rogus said. “I was just happy I did something productive.”

Webster shot 45.1 percent—the third-best percentage in school history—over 162 attempts to set the mark, while Rogus hit 34.3 percent of his 216 to break it.

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