Brown Overpowers Cold Crimson

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—The Harvard men’s basketball team finished its disappointing five-game Ivy League road trip Saturday night, and the result was as frustrating as the four previous contests.

With a 71-51 loss to Brown (12-8, 4-2 Ivy) at the Pizzitola Sports Center, the Crimson (6-16, 1-5 Ivy) lost its fifth straight and continued its road woes, falling to a miserable 1-14 away from Lavietes Pavilion.

“We’ve been on the road for what seems like forever, and I think it’s certainly taken its toll,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said. “We didn’t seem to have our legs in the first half, and it really seemed like it affected our shooting.”

After a frenetic loss at Yale the previous night, the Crimson came out cold in Saturday’s game, missing its first six field goal attempts, and 11 of its first 12.

Nearly nine minutes into the game, Harvard had notched just two points and trailed 11-2.

It didn’t get much better. Brown used good ball movement and several backdoor cuts to beat Harvard in the paint and put the Crimson away early.

When Harvard got within eight at 16-8, the Bears used an 8-0 run to break away, and Brown finished the half with another 8-0 run to put the game out of reach, leading 37-16 heading into the locker room.

The Crimson shot just 22.2% (6-for-27) in the first half, including just 8.3% (1-for-12) from beyond the arc.

“We got a couple clean looks—they just didn’t fall for us, and unfortunately, we let that translate into other parts of the game,” captain Brad Unger said. “We let it affect us on the defensive end. We let them have 37 points in the first half. In a game that’s not real fast-paced, that’s just too many. You can’t let it affect you if your shot is not falling.”

The second half was a battle that Harvard won, outscoring the Bears 35-34 after the break, but the Crimson never made a substantial run to cut into Brown’s big lead.

Facing such a large deficit, Amaker gave many of the Crimson regulars a break, which allowed little-used players to get a chance on the court.

And they delivered.

Sophomore guard Alek Blankenau tallied 14 minutes, hitting four three-pointers en route to a game-high 14 points—all in the second half—and freshman Kyle Fitzgerald came off the bench to notch 10 points and seven rebounds.

“That’s usually what I do, I’m a three point guy,” Blankenau said. “My teammates did a good job of...getting the ball out to me, and I was just able to sit there and catch and shoot.”

Brown opened up its largest lead of the game, 61-35, with 9:39 to play on a three-pointer by Adrian Williams, the Bears spark-plug guard who finished with 13 points and two steals.

Minutes later, a string of three-pointers, two by Blankenau and another by sophomore Jeremy Lin—who led the starters with seven points and six rebounds—pulled Harvard within 18, 67-49, with 2:31 to play.

After two Bears free throws, the teams traded buckets for the final margin.

Brown’s leading scorer Mark McAndrew led the Bears with 14 points. While Harvard finished shooting just 31.6% from the field, Brown converted 54.6%.

With the loss, the Crimson is tied for last in the Ivy League with Dartmouth. Brown is in second, behind undefeated Cornell (6-0 Ivy), who will come to Lavietes along with Columbia next weekend.

“We got off to a tough start here—five losses is tough to come back from,” Unger said. “But you got to keep going, you never know what will happen. You can’t dwell on that too much when you’re going to work every week at practice. You just got to keep working hard and getting after it.”

Harvard is yet to beat a team on the road in its own arena this season. The Crimson’s lone win away from home came on at a Stanford tournament against Northwestern State.

“We’ve struggled like you wouldn’t believe on the road this year,” he added. “So hopefully we can get home and come back and get some more wins.”

—Staff writer Kevin C. Reyes can be reached at kreyes@fas.harvard.edu.