Mens Hoops Heads Home to Face Yale, Brown

Dorothy may not have been talking about Lavietes Pavilion when she said “there’s no place like home,” but the Harvard men’s basketball team certainly understands the sentiment.

After an exciting road trip brought the team a four-point loss at Princeton and a thrilling double-overtime one-point victory over Penn, the team returns this weekend to the comforts of Cambridge, where it is 10-0 on the season.

There the Crimson (16-4, 5-1 Ivy) will take on conference foes Yale (11-9, 4-2) and Brown (8-12, 1-5) tonight and tomorrow, respectively, with each game starting at 7 p.m.

With no Ivy League tournament, every conference game becomes vitally important, and Harvard knows it cannot take any team lightly, despite its success thus far.

“It’s going to be a big weekend for us, coming back home after taking our first loss,” said junior co-captain Oliver McNally, who hit the game-winning shot with 11 seconds remaining versus the Quakers. “They’re two tough teams.”

After Michael Sands–Yale’s captain and expected best player in 2010-2011–left the team before the start of the season, the Bulldogs were not expected to compete for a conference title this year.

But the team picked up the slack caused by Sands’ departure and, after an early victory at Boston College, has surprised many pundits this season with its play.

The Bulldogs have since given the Tigers a test at Jadwin Gymnasium–when they rallied back from a 13-point deficit with 8:15 to go before losing by four–and swept Columbia and Cornell at home last weekend.

“It’s going to be a really big game for us,” sophomore forward Kyle Casey said. “They’ve been playing very well, especially of late.”

As a team, the Bulldogs rank in the middle of the pack in nearly all statistical categories.

But the team’s success has stemmed from the improved play of three individuals–junior center Greg Mangano, sophomore guard Austin Morgan, and senior guard Porter Braswell.

After averaging just 7.5 points and 5.5 rebounds last season, Magnano has developed into one of the best players in the conference, averaging 15.1 points and a league-high 10 rebounds and 2.9 blocks per game.

He will pose a tough matchup for Harvard junior co-captain Keith Wright, who is coming off a career-high 25 points versus Penn. Wright sits right above Magnano as the league’s second-leading scorer (15.3 points per game) and right behind him in rebounding (8.4 per game).

“We’re going to play [Magnano] just like we play everyone else,” sophomore forward Kyle Casey said. “Hopefully we can just disrupt his game a little bit. We’re going to play him physically and try to make savvy plays on him and get him out of his comfort zone.”

Morgan, meanwhile, has increased his scoring from 4.7 to 13.0 points per contest while shooting 45 percent from three-point range. He will provide a challenge defensively for Crimson sophomore Brandyn Curry, who leads the conference in assists per game and who is often asked to defend the opponent’s best perimeter guard. Morgan’s backcourt mate Braswell has likewise improved from his scoring 6.0 to 11.1 points this season.

“[Defending Yale’s guards] is going to be a team effort, but I also think Brandyn and I have to take pride in that they’re both good players,” McNally said. “We just have to really buckle down and stay in front of the ball and make them take tough shots.”

Like the Bulldogs, Brown has multiple players who can score, starting with freshman Sean McGonagill, who is having an impressive rookie year. The point guard wowed the league when he scored 39 points on 15-of-19 shooting in Brown’s win versus Columbia last weekend, which earned him both Ivy League Player of the Week and Rookie of the Year honors.

“That was crazy,” McNally said. “We all saw that box score. Someone who can do that–we know that’s someone we’ve got to keep a watchful eye on.”

McGonagill averages 11.7 points, to go with 5.1 assists and 4 rebounds on the season. He will be one of two Rookie of the Year candidates playing tomorrow night, along with Harvard’s Laurent Rivard, who averages 11.5 points and leads the conference in free-throw percentage.

The Bears leading scorer is senior captain Peter Sullivan, who averages 13.1 points per contest. Forward Tucker Halperin contributes 11.8 points, providing another tough matchup for the Harvard front-court of Wright and Casey, who both struggled with foul trouble last weekend versus Princeton. Senior guard Garrett Leffelman chips in 9.4 points per game after averaging 17.5 against Harvard last year.

Brown’s struggles have thus not been offensive but rather defensive. The Bears rank last in the conference in scoring defense, allowing 72.6 points per contest, and have the worst turnover margin in the Ivy.

Casey said the key to being Brown might therefore be making use of Harvard’s speed.

“We’ve just got to play as fast and as under control as we can,” the sophomore said. “We’re just going to try to play our pace...and try to speed them up.”

Harvard swept the pair twice last year. The best game of the quartet was an 82-79 overtime victory at Yale, a win in which four freshmen, led by Casey, carried the team after McNally and Jeremy Lin ’10 fouled out in regulation. The team then swept Yale and Brown by an average of 20 points at home, a feat it knows it will be hard-pressed to duplicate this weekend.

“They both pose different kinds of styles,” McNally said. “Taking both of these will definitely be a battle.”

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