Men's Basketball Topples Bryant, 86-68

Although the Harvard men’s basketball schedule said that Wednesday’s contest was a home game, anyone at Lavietes Pavilion tonight would beg to differ.

A full Bryant student section, however, would not be enough for the Bulldogs to stay with the Crimson in the second half, as a 16-2 Harvard run propelled it to a lead it would not relinquish. In the end, Harvard came out on top, 86-68.

The streak only began after the Bulldogs rolled off six consecutive points, reducing their deficit to single digits.  A layup by junior Alex Francis, followed by four made free throws from sophomore Dyanmi Starks, cut the Crimson lead to eight, setting up the biggest run of the game.

With 8:26 remaining, Harvard junior wing Wesley Saunders knocked down two shots from the charity stripe, instigating an almost four-minute span in which the Crimson faced little offensive competition from Bryant.

Less than a minute after Saunders’ trip to the line, a block by junior forward Steve Moundou-Missi sent Harvard running in transition. Junior Alex Nesbitt threw the ball ahead to Saunders, setting in motion a series of passes that ended with Moundou-Missi collecting the ball on the right block, dribbling twice across the lane, and finishing the possession with a lefty lay-up.

“That was a real big block,” Saunders said. “That was a real momentum swing. Steve was flying around everywhere tonight.… He was a monster [tonight].”

On the subsequent possession, Moundou-Missi knocked down a short baseline jumper, extending the lead to 14. The junior would score four more times before the Crimson’s run ended, leading to a career high 23 points for the Cameroon native. Moundou-Missi also tallied nine rebounds and four blocks, both game-highs.

“I thought Steve played exceptionally well,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said. “It was obvious that he was active, he was finishing around the goal…[overall, it was] an outstanding performance from him.”

After Bulldog Corey Maynard completed an and-one, Harvard’s streak was over. The damage, however, was already done. From that point on, Bryant would not come within 17 points of the home team.

While it was Harvard’s offense that lit up the scoreboard in the second half, Amaker attributed the extension of his team’s lead to its efforts on the defensive end.

“[At the beginning of the run] we switched defenses a little bit,” Amaker explained. “I thought that helped us; maybe threw them out of sync, out of rhythm. We play[ed] some zone for just for a few possessions, and I thought that allowed us to get some stops and some run-outs, which I thought gave us a great deal of confidence.”

The Crimson notched 11 blocks on the night, with senior Kyle Casey, junior Jonah Travis, and Saunders each adding two to Moundou-Missi’s four.

It was Saunders’ defense on Starks, however, that stole the defensive spotlight. The Bulldog guard came into Wednesday night averaging a nation-high 33.3 points per game. After 40 minutes against Saunders, that average dropped significantly, as he totaled only 11 points on three-for-10 shooting.

Along with his efforts on the defensive end, including three steals and two blocks, Saunders contributed 25 points and five assists on the offensive side of things, the latter being just two shy of his career-high.

Wednesday’s match-up marked the first time all season that the Crimson shot over 50 percent from the field.

Such offensive efficiency began on the very first possession, as just 14 seconds after the opening tip, Casey slammed home a cross-court alley-oop pass from Saunders. Bryant proceeded to tie the score on the next possession, following a give-and-go between Francis and Maynard that led the latter to lay the ball in at the 19:22 mark.

The back-and-forth scoring would continue until several strong put-backs from Moundou-Missi enabled the Crimson to stretch its lead to as many as 12 in the opening period.

With an assortment of mismatches and the lead hovering around 10 for much of the game, the Harvard bench did not see as many minutes as it had of late.

“They’re not a very big team, so that limited us in terms of the amount of bigs that we could rotate through,” Amaker said. “[Additionally,] we never [felt] comfortable about where we were in terms of the lead. We never could feel that we had things stretched out…[to the point] where we could go to our bench.”

Wednesday’s contest marked the last time the Crimson plays at Lavietes for over a month, with the team traveling to Colorado and the Great Alaska Shootout next week.

“This was a big game for us,” Saunders said. “We wanted to start off our road trip on a good note…We came out with energy and [Bryant’s] crowd came out, which got us extra pumped up. It was intense for us playing against such…a great team.”

—Staff writer Juliet Spies-Gans can be reached at juliet.spies-gans@thecrimson.com.