Bulldogs Dominate Inside Game, Down Harvard for the Seventh Consecutive Time

Outmanned and outshot, the Harvard men’s basketball team extended its losing streak to four straight games Friday night, falling 87-66 to Yale (8-11, 3-2 Ivy) at Lavietes Pavilion. Down by only five at halftime, the Crimson (9-10, 1-4) went 30 percent from the field in the second half, making just one three pointer in the final twenty minutes. Junior guard Jeremy Lin led the way yet again for Harvard with a game-high 23 points, but he didn’t get much help—as captain guard Andrew Pusar was his only teammate to reach double-digit scoring, tallying 11 points.

Harvard’s front court, depleted by injuries, was overmatched by the Bulldogs’ rotation of big men. Yale captain Ross Morin and fellow forward Travis Pinick scored 15 points each, and four others, averaging a height of 6’8”, each saw significant minutes. The Bulldog bench outscored the Crimson’s 35-18.

“The strength of our team is our guys inside,” Yale coach James Jones said. “They need to finish for us, and they did tonight.”

Crimson senior Evan Harris was effective with eight points in his first game back from a knee injury, but Harvard’s pair of freshman forwards found little success on the offensive end. Forced to defend taller and heavier players, Peter Boehm showed spirit but had a cold shooting night, making only one triple in seven attempts. Despite pulling in a game-high seven rebounds, Keith Wright scored four points and did not make it to the free throw line in a game filled with 48 fouls. Yale had 40 points in the paint to the host’s 22.

“[The Bulldogs] did a tremendous job of being physical and strong around the rim, and that was the Achilles heel for us this evening,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said.



Along with the mismatch down low, Yale’s shooters spread the floor, making 5 of 10 three-pointers.

“Hitting some outside shots really opened the ball up inside,” said Morin, who scored 11 of his points in the second half. “We executed some plays well, got some easy buckets.”

The Bulldogs opened the night on an 8-3 run, until the home team answered with a 10-2 spurt to take a three-point lead just under five minutes into the game. After four Crimson turnovers in two and half minutes, an emphatic Pinick dunk gave Yale the lead at 12:21. A Pusar triple and senior guard Drew Housman’s two free throws tied things up four minutes later, but thirteen straight Bulldog points gave Yale the lead for good. Harvard closed the half on a 10-4 run to cut the deficit to five.

Both teams shot well in the first half, the visitors making 17 of 29 shots (58.6 percent), while Harvard was an even hotter 63.6 percent (14 of 22). But the Crimson made 11 turnovers in the period, leading to 13 Bulldog points.

Harvard kept it close early in the second half, down by three after Lin’s layup two and a half minutes in. The ensuing 21-8 Yale run, an eight-minute span during which the Crimson made only one field goal, put the game out of reach. Leading by 14 midway through the second half, the Bulldogs extended the advantage as high as 24, making the most of high-percentage opportunities inside as well as free throws.

The hot hands of the home team went cold after halftime, as Harvard missed 10 of its final 14 field goal attempts and eight of its final 10. Crimson freshman Oliver McNally’s steal and dunk as time expired were of little consolation for the raucous home crowd.

After struggling offensively last weekend in losses to Columbia and Cornell, Yale shot 55 percent from the field and scored a season-high 87 points.

The loss was Harvard’s seventh-straight to Yale.

—Staff writer Dennis J. Zheng can be reached at dzheng12@college.harvard.edu.