Lions’ Second-Half Surge Caps Heartbreaking Weekend

The hits keep coming for the Harvard men’s basketball team this season. The misery of a winless five-game road trip was compounded this weekend by back-to-back losses to the Crimson’s New York Ivy brethren.

Once again wilting under the pressure of strong interior play, Harvard squandered a nine point lead with 14:54 remaining in the second to Columbia’s big men, as the Lions came out on top with a 73-64 victory at Lavietes.

“It’s been a tough stretch,” head coach Tommy Amaker said. “We’ve played some really good minutes or stretches and then we’ve hit that wall and haven’t been able to fight through it.”

That wall could more accurately be described as Columbia forwards John Baumann and Ben Nwachukwu. Baumann, entering the game as the Ivy league’s fourth highest scorer, lived up to his reputation as he led the Lions in scoring with 20 points. He supplemented that total with 12 boards, including four offensive rebounds.

Not to be forgotten, Nwachukwu contributed with 16 points of his own and routinely dominated the Crimson’s overmatched forwards throughout the night.

Although it didn’t carry quite the same punch as the previous day’s collapse to Cornell, the defeat still left an indelibly sour mark on Harvard’s dreadful Ivy campaign.

The Crimson came out of the gates with a considerable amount of intensity, quickly jumping out to a six point led in the first five minutes of the game. Surprisingly, given their back-to-back schedule, Harvard sustained its energy with impressive shooting from the floor.

“I told [the team] at halftime that I was very impressed and very proud because of the way they came out and played their first 20 minutes,” Amaker said. “Given that we were obviously very concerned about the tough loss the night before, I thought we responded beautifully.”

“In a lot of ways it showed toughness, a lot of guts, and a lot of character for our team,” he added.

Junior guard Drew Housman displayed much of that character, leading all scorers with 25 points and once again playing 36 minutes after racking up as much floor time the night before. Junior Evan Harris, who dealt with the monumental task of battling Baumann and Nwachukwu, contributed 14 points on 50 percent shooting from the floor along with eight rebounds. His four fouls, however, highlighted a night of inopportune foul trouble for the Crimson.

The foul trouble proved vital to Columbia’s cause in the second half, as the Lions roared back from a nine-point deficit to take the lead for good with 10 minutes to play.

After scoring only five points in the first, Columbia rearranged its offense to focus on its interior play, allowing Baumann to tear Harvard up with 15 points and nine boards after the break. Once the Lions took the lead, the steady presence of Baumann and Nwachukwu paced Columbia to a nine-point victory.

The Lions emphatically ended the game with an Asenson Ampim dunk that whipped the visiting crowd into frenzy.

“We definitely thought their interior is a strength of theirs,” Amaker said. “We were concerned with how they would come after us and put the ball inside and they did. They did a nice job of getting the ball into their post player and we weren’t very good at denying them.”

The Crimson shooting—the aspect of its offense that kept them in the game against Cornell—betrayed Harvard on Saturday. After shooting 33 percent from three-point range and 43 percent from the floor, the Crimson shot 18 percent and 30 percent, respectively, in the second frame.

“If your three pointer is not falling, you kind of live or die by it,” Housman said.

Although the weekend resulted in two losses for Harvard, the team did display the ability to compete with arguably the two best teams in the conference, while showcasing an impressive reserve of stamina.

Both games, however, showed a crippling weakness in post play.

“Execution, toughness, rebounding—that’s all on our plate for this week,” Harris said.

—Staff writer Mauricio A. Cruz can be reached at cruz2@fas.harvard.edu.