Harvard Hoops Falls to Michigan in Amaker's Return to Ann Arbor

UPDATED: 12/5/10 9:05 P.M. Tommy Amaker’s team did everything it could to earn its coach a victory in his return to Ann Arbor. But in the second half of Saturday’s contest, Harvard (5-2) got cold right as Michigan (5-2) got hot, and the Crimson was narrowly defeated in its attempt to win the school’s first road game against a Big Ten opponent since 1949.

The contest turned on a 19-1 second-half run by the Wolverines–who Amaker coached for six years before arriving in Cambridge–that quickly erased a 12-point Harvard advantage. The Crimson was unable to make up the deficit late, falling, 65-62, in front of nearly 10,000 fans at Crisler Arena.

“I thought it was a game we let slip away from us,” sophomore wing Christian Webster said. “We had the game in our grasp the whole first half.”

After entering the second up seven at 32-25, Harvard got a three-point play from junior co-captain Keith Wright and a floater from sophomore Brandyn Curry to open up its biggest lead of the game at 12.

But the momentum quickly swung in Michigan’s favor. Junior guard Stu Douglass drilled a long three, and on the next Crimson possession, Webster got caught in mid-air and threw the ball away, leading to an easy fast break dunk by Wolverine Darius Morris.

A clearly flustered Harvard squad then began to run its offense through Wright, consistently feeding the center inside, but Wright began to try to force shots, to no avail.

The junior’s turnover on Harvard’s next possession led to a Douglass layup at the other end, and after Wright hit one of two free throws the next time down, Douglass hit a fade-away jumper over Crimson junior co-captain Oliver McNally’s outstretched arm to cut it to 38-34.

Harvard then went right back inside to Wright, who missed a close-range shot, and four straight points by Wolverine Blake McLimans tied the game.

“We let them get going from the three-point line,” McNally said. “They started hitting some shots, and we started getting stagnant on offense, just waiting for Keith to do things.”

Douglass subsequently drilled back-to-back long threes on Michigan’s next two possessions, and the Wolverines were up six with 12:53 remaining.

“I think that’s kind of where the game got out of hand,” Webster said. “[Douglass] started making shots. I think we lost him a couple times on defense, and once you let a shooter get going like that it’s hard to stop him.”

But freshman guard Laurent Rivard matched Douglass with a long three of his own—as he would multiple times on the afternoon—to slow Michigan’s momentum. A Wright jumper and Webster three put the Crimson back ahead by two with 9:55 left, but that would be Harvard’s last lead of the contest.

The teams went back and forth for the next few minutes, but after two Webster free throws cut Michigan’s advantage to one, the Crimson left Matt Vogrich wide open for a triple to put the Wolverines up, 54-50.

Curry then picked up his fourth foul, forcing Amaker to replace him with freshman Ernest Rouse, who had not appeared in the game up to that point and air-balled a corner three with 3:38 remaining. Amaker quickly went back to Curry, but Novak beat Rivard backdoor for a reverse layup on the next Wolverine possession to give Michigan a six-point advantage.

After a Wright hook-layup, Douglass got open after some Crimson defensive miscommunication and drilled another long three to put the Wolverines up seven.

Rivard matched with a deep trey of his own, and Michigan missed some free throws down the stretch to give the Crimson a chance. But with eight seconds to go, Webster hit the back rim on a three that would have cut the lead to one, and Michigan was able to hold on for the victory.

“I thought we played pretty well,” McNally said. “But when you’re playing on the road, especially against a good team, you’ve got to be really sharp and not have any let downs, and I don’t think we did that well enough.”

The game was a back-and-forth affair early on as well. A 7-0 Michigan run capped by a Morgan jumper put the home team up right away, but Harvard–led by Wright’s three baskets off some nifty footwork–fought right back with a 12-0 run of its own to go up 22-17 four minutes later.

Douglass and Rivard then matched threes and a Wright layup off an acrobatic spin move would put the Crimson up seven with two minutes remaining in the half.

After Michigan shrunk the advantage, another Rivard long ball put the Crimson ahead by nine, but Morris hit a running jumper with a second remaining to send his team into the locker room down seven.

Rivard–who struggled massively in his first game in front of a similarly large crowd at George Mason–drilled five threes for the second straight contest, finishing with 15 points and preventing the Wolverines from breaking the game open on multiple occasions.

“I know last year in the first game for me, it was hard,” Webster said. “But I think he’s gotten used to it, and he’s found his rhythm.”

Wright added 18 points and 12 rebounds for his third double-double on the season. Webster scored 15 but struggled from beyond the arc, going 3-for-9. The team was hurt by the illness of sophomore Kyle Casey, who played only seven minutes.

Douglass proved to be the difference-maker against Harvard by going 5-of-7 from long distance and finishing with 19 points. Morris added 13 and Novak 12 for the Wolverines, who outshot the Crimson 58 percent to 38 percent from the field in the second half.

“Coach has done a lot for us, so it definitely would’ve been a good feeling to get him a win [in his return],” McNally said. “But it didn’t work out.”

—Staff writer Scott A. Sherman can be reached at ssherman13@college.harvard.edu.