Men's Basketball Drops Opener of Four-Game Road Trip

NEW HAVEN, Conn.—It was an inauspicious start to a four-game Ivy road swing as the Harvard men’s basketball team fell to Yale 82-74 Friday night at the John J. Lee Amphitheater.

After Bulldogs point guard Chris Andrews hit two free throws to forge a 72-57 lead, the Crimson (10-6, 2-1 Ivy) scored the next seven points to pull within eight. Harvard could have cut further into the Yale advantage, but it connected on just 5-of-9 attempts from the free throw line during that span.

The Crimson struggled from the line all night, converting just 19 of its 33 opportunities, well below its season average.

“We didn’t help ourselves,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. “To get to the line 33 times and only shoot 58 percent, that’s not a good number for us.”

Crimson guards Ko Yada and Drew Housman, as well as forward Zach Martin, each hit three-pointers in the final minute. But the Bulldogs (10-8, 2-1) went 10-for-12 from the line to ice the game.

The strong performance down the stretch masked what had been an abysmal showing from the stripe for Yale. The Bulldogs started the game just 11-of-21 from the free-throw line.

Yale led 33-30 at the intermission and pushed that margin to 11 with a 13-5 run out of the break. A trifecta by Harvard guard Jim Goffredo capped a 7-0 Crimson run and closed the gap to four, 46-42, but that would be as close as Harvard would come the rest of the way.

“It was good to see the guys respond down the stretch,” captain Matt Stehle said. “But we really couldn’t come up with a stop when we needed to.”

Hughes immediately drained a three pointer to push the lead back to seven. The Bulldogs were extremely efficient from behind the arc on the night, hitting nine of their 13 attempts from three. Caleb and Nick Holmes, who are twin brothers, combined to go 6-for-6 from three-point land, while guard Eric Flato connected on two of his four attempts.

“For us, it boiled down to a couple things defensively, but the first is guarding the three-point line,” Sullivan said. “We’re still in a guard-dominated league. You’ve got to guard the three-point line, and you’ve got to stay even or better on the three-point line.”

Harvard hit nine threes as well, but it took nine more attempts for it to do so.

The Crimson big men, Stehle and senior center Brian Cusworth, battled foul trouble throughout the second half. Stehle picked up his fifth foul with 3:15 to go, and Cusworth followed Stehle to the bench just over a minute later.

“I think he put a lot of pressure on himself and over-anticipated in order to generate some steals,” Sullivan said of Stehle’s fouls.

Cusworth finished with 16 points and nine boards, while Stehle tallied 13 to go along with nine rebounds. Cusworth also blocked five shots on the night.

“I really took myself out of the game,” Stehle said. “I had a bunch of stupid fouls, and I played an uneven game.”

“[Cusworth] took a lot of jump shots tonight,” Yale Coach James Jones said. “I could have him taking jump shots all day. I’d rather have him out there than at the basket. He settled for those shots as opposed to going inside.”

With the big men in foul trouble, Yale forward Sam Kaplan and center Dominick Martin took advantage, combining to score 26 points on 11-of-18 shooting.

“They just had their way with us,” Stehle said.

For Kaplan, the game was a vindication.

“We’ve all been looking forward to this match up,” Kaplan said, “because they’ve gotten a lot of publicity, papers talking about [how] they’re the best frontcourt in the league, and how they’re both first team all-Ivy players. It felt good to get a big ‘W’ against them tonight.”

Goffredo led all scorers with 21 points on 6-of-15 shooting.

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