Harvard Tops Dartmouth Behind Goffredo's Outburst

The pressure-free non-conference slate is a thing of the past. The Ivy season has begun, and now it’s all about survival.

The Harvard men’s basketball team did just that, winning its Ivy League opener against Dartmouth 78-65 on Saturday afternoon at Lavietes Pavilion.

“This is first round of the 14-game tournament, and we just advanced, so I couldn’t be any happier right now,” junior center Brian Cusworth said.

The Crimson used an 11-2 run midway through the second half to build a 20-point lead, its largest of the contest, and never allowed the Big Green back within 13. Junior guard Jim Goffredo had five of his career-high 33 points during the spurt.

Goffredo also set career-highs in field goals, three-pointers made, three-pointers attempted, and minutes.

“My shot felt great tonight,” Goffredo said. “I hadn’t been making them too much lately, but I knew that my shot hadn’t felt bad, so I didn’t worry about it all that much.”

Senior forward Matt Stehle and junior center Brian Cusworth combined for 29 points, and Stehle added eight rebounds and eight assists—finishing two shy of a triple-double in each category.

“I always thought—and I don’t know if it’ll ever happen—that Matt was the one guy on this club that could get a triple-double,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. “And tonight he might have had it with a little luck.”

“When you have three or four weapons, you try to take three of those weapons away, eventually, if you don’t pay attention to detail, one of those guys...will hurt you,” Dartmouth coach Terry Dunn said. “They got three guys that scored a total of 62 out of 78 points.”

After missing seven games with a fractured left hand, Cusworth put an emphatic exclamation point on the contest with a fast-break dunk that gave Harvard a 77-58 lead with 1:30 to play.

“I don’t think I’ve ever jumped that high,” Cusworth joked. “That was definitely the feeling of, ‘It’s great to be back.’”

Cusworth finished the contest shooting 5-for-13 from the field and pulled down five rebounds while committing two turnovers.

“He’s a little better [coming back from injury] this year than last year,” Sullivan said. “But obviously what he finds is that his timing is off, he’s a little rusty, and his hand is not as strong.”

The Crimson led 38-27 at the intermission and never allowed the Big Green to pull within single-digits of the lead, though Dartmouth closed the gap to 10 twice.

Harvard opened the game with a 10-0 run and expanded the lead to 11. But the Big Green ran off 11 of the next 13 points to pull back within two. Dartmouth guard Michael Giovacchini, whose brother David Giovacchini ’05 manned the point for the Crimson last season, had two threes during the run and finished with 19 points, tying a career high.

Goffredo responded with an 8-0 spurt of his own, netting the final two points of the run from the line after Dunn was awarded a technical foul.

“I’m going to fight for my kids,” Dunn said. “If I think that there’s some inequity there, I’m going to let people know. But did it change the calls? No, I don’t think so.”

Dartmouth nailed five three-pointers in the first half, but Goffredo matched that with five of his own to keep the Harvard’s comfortable cushion intact. The two sides finished the game with almost identical percentages from three (36.8 for the Crimson, 36.4 for the Big Green).

“We’re in a three-point shooting league, and if your defense against the three is not solid, you’re putting yourself in a big hole,” Sullivan said. “You have to stay even or better from the three-point line in this league to win.”

Harvard out-rebounded Dartmouth 41-27 on the afternoon and grabbed more than half of the boards on its offensive end, while corralling 68 percent of its defensive rebounds.

The Crimson will travel to Hanover, N.H., Friday night at 7 p.m. to complete the home-and-home series with the Big Green.

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