Yale’s Offense Falters Under Pressure

As they watched their opponents toss away another pass into the stands Friday evening, the No. 23 Harvard men’s basketball team could have spared the host Bulldogs an ounce of sympathy. Two years ago, the Crimson had found itself in an eerily similar set of circumstances: an upstart team hoping to rely on an Ivy Player of the Year candidate to upset the league favorite.

But just as a youthful Harvard squad did against the 2009-10 edition of the Big Red—which eventually reached the Sweet 16—Yale wilted under the spotlight.

Entering Friday’s contest riding a four-game winning streak, the Bulldogs looked nothing like a team that tied for second in the league’s preseason poll and even received the one first-place vote that did not go to the Crimson.

In falling to Harvard by a score of 65-35, Yale struggled to take care of the ball in front of a vocal sold-out crowd, the school’s first in four seasons. On its opening possession of the night, Bulldogs star center Greg Mangano pulled down an offensive rebound but then lost the ball out of bounds. Yale spent the rest of the half accumulating 13 more turnovers, losing the ball in the post or committing backcourt and traveling violations before heading into intermission down by 11.

Looking confident and composed in the face of a hostile atmosphere, the now-veteran Crimson was the aggressor on defense, pressuring the ball on the perimeter and down low.

“They’re a very solid defensive team,” Mangano said. “I don’t think we were ready for how physical they were going to be. We haven’t seen that much this year. It was eye-opening.”

The Bulldogs’ season-high 22 turnovers led to 26 points for Harvard, which had just 10 giveaways on the night.

BENCH WORK

Though its veteran leadership proved invaluable in battling a raucous road environment, Harvard did not rely on its typical big names in sending the Bulldogs to their first Ivy loss.

The Crimson’s offense struggled in the early going—big men Kyle Casey and Keith Wright combined for two points in the opening half—but found success once Amaker sent in his backups six minutes in.

Rookie Wesley Saunders had all of his four points in seven first-half minutes, taking advantage of his ability to create his own shot off the dribble. His jumper with 11:34 remaining opened up a two-point Harvard lead, which was followed by two straight baskets from classmate Steve Moundou-Missi.

Mondou-Missi, who had 10 points, five rebounds, and three steals in another strong performance off the pine, has gone a total of 18 of 25 from the field in his last four games. Though the starters returned to the floor and hit a pair of three-pointers, it was Moundou-Missi, Saunders, and classmate Corbin Miller who had the Crimson’s final three baskets of the half to open up the squad’s first double-digit advantage of the contest.

Although its reliance on bench scoring was nothing like the previous weekend at Dartmouth—where the Crimson’s reserves outscored its starters by 10 points—15 of Harvard’s 30 first-half points came from non-starters Friday.

“What Tommy has amassed is a group of players where everybody’s equal for the most part,” Yale coach Joe Jones said. “He’s got 10 guys, and probably nine of them are interchangeable in the sense that it doesn’t make a difference who’s in for the most part. With them last year, Keith wright was a main cog, Kyle Casey was a main cog. You could concentrate on those guys, as we did in those games here. When you’ve got a number of different guys that can score on you, it makes it harder.”

MANGY BULLDOG

Much of the Bulldogs’ upset hopes lay on the shoulders of Mangano, who had a team-high 17 points and scored the 1,000th point of his career on a three-pointer with 12:40 left in the first half. The senior, who represented the United States in the World University Games in China in August, became the 24th player in school history to reach the mark. But milestones aside, he was never dominant against the Crimson, which rotated Casey, Wright, and Moundou-Missi on him and generally seemed content to allow him his points and focus its efforts on his teammates.

Mangano, who notched four rebounds and two blocks in 31 minutes, was five of seven from the field in the second half but could not lead a squad-wide comeback after his team went down by 20 midway through the final period. He appeared frustrated with officiating all night, and the inability of his teammates to hold onto the ball could not have helped.

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