ATHLETE OF THE WEEK: Stehle Carries Men's Basketball With Career Week

Entering this season, the Harvard men’s basketball team’s frontcourt duo of senior Matt Stehle and junior Brian Cusworth was ranked as one of the best tandems in all of the Ivy League.

As it turns out, even half of that duo is still pretty good.

With Cusworth having missed nearly half of the season due to a fractured left hand, Stehle has stepped up his play this year, guiding the Crimson to a 7-3 record while averaging a team-best 15.8 points per game to date. In last week’s two games against New York opponents Albany and Long Island, Stehle amassed 44 points, including a career-high 27 at home against LIU last Wednesday en route to being named the Ivy League Player of the Week.

“The last two games [without Cusworth] I was definitely pressing, especially up at Lehigh—I was trying to do too much,” said Stehle after the win over the Blackbirds. “Tonight I was fortunate to get some easy looks.”

Those easy looks came in the form of nine-for-16 shooting from the field and an eight-for-eight mark from the free throw line. Although Stehle was perfect on his own trips to the strike, he was almost doomed by his own foul trouble. The power forward picked up two early fouls against LIU, and the difference in Harvard’s play was apparent while he was on the bench.

“He’s realized now that we need him on the floor...and he has to stay out of foul trouble, and he can’t pick up silly fouls,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. “He’s gotten better this year, he’s as good as he’s been...when he’s not on the floor, we’re a little bit different.”

Against the Great Danes last weekend, Stehle picked up only two personal fouls in the Crimson’s 61-48 victory, a game in which 67 percent shooting—eight-for-12—from the field helped pick up the slack for another injured Harvard player. Junior shooting guard Jim Goffredo, whose scoring average of 14.3 per game ranks second on the team behind Stehle, missed the Albany game with a staph infection. Nevertheless, a team-leading 17 points from Stehle helped the Crimson earn a road win against an Albany team with NCAA tournament aspirations.

“There’s a reason why they were picked to win America East,” Sullivan said. “Our guys went into the game not in awe, and they didn’t get too concerned about two starters out.”

Despite Harvard having to make up for Goffredo’s scoring, the game was won on the defensive end, as the 48 Albany points were the team’s lowest output in over two years.

“It was a very good win for us, especially in Jimmy’s absence,” Stehle said. “We were more worried about stopping them on defense than scoring. I think we had to get our feet under us, and once we did we realized that we could not only play with these guys, but that we could beat them.”

Last week’s wins snapped a three-game losing streak for Hrvard. Still, though Stehle has been the leader in getting the team back on track, he is quick to defer the credit to his teammates.

“The guards and the younger guys played a hell of a game,” Stehle said after the win in New York. “It was a total team effort.”

The effort was still led by Stehle, who, even when pressed to talk about himself, doesn’t take too much credit.

“Guys were driving, and [LIU] was collapsing,” he said following the Blackbird game. “I just got some easy baskets my teammates created for me.”