Saunders Earns Great Alaska Shootout MVP

The last time Harvard played an early-season tournament, junior guard Wesley Saunders was on the bench. In the 2011 Battle for Atlantis, the freshman averaged just over 16 minutes a game, backing up the upperclassman backcourt of Brandyn Curry and Oliver McNally ’12. In three games, Saunders tallied four shots and 13 points.

Two years later at the 2013 Great Alaska Shootout, Saunders reached those milestones in just 22 minutes of play. No longer a role player, the junior has blossomed into, in the words of coach Tommy Amaker, “our best all-around player.”

In the three Crimson wins, Saunders averaged a shade over 14 points, shooting 53 percent from the field and chipping in eight rebounds and 4.7 assists a game. He was later named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, joining a group of past winners that includes NBA players Dwyane Wade and Ray Allen.

“He was very deserving of the Most Outstanding Player,” Amaker said. “There is no question that he earned that and did everything for us on both ends of the floor.”

As the team’s leading scorer, Saunders is asked to do a lot on the offensive end—taking over 10 shots and dishing out nearly four assists a game. However, Amaker said, the team has placed a lot of defensive responsibility on him as well. The team’s best perimeter defender, Saunders guards everyone from forwards to point guards.

When the Crimson faced Green Bay in the semifinals, the 6’6” Saunders was matched up against the opposing team’s best offensive player—the 5’11” Kiefer Sykes. The speedy Sykes scored 26 points in the game, but only three in the final eight minutes. During that same span, Saunders added six points, two rebounds, and an assist as the Crimson ended the game on a 22-8 run in a 76-64 victory.

“For Wesley to draw [Sykes] defensively and do the job that he did was phenomenal,” Amaker said. “From an offensive standpoint, he did a fantastic job and I think [Green Bay is] a great defensive team with a dynamic offensive player in Sykes.”

It was not the first time Amaker asked Saunders to defend a speedy point guard. Howard’s James Daniel came into Cambridge on Nov. 15 averaging over 23 points a game, making more than four shots a game from behind the arc. Normally, the task would have been given to Curry, an ace perimeter defender, who was a game-time decision. Minutes before the game, with Curry sidelined with an injury, Saunders was notified that he would guard Daniel.

If Saunders was nervous, it did not show. The junior harassed Daniel into a season-low 14 points. The Howard guard missed 10 of 14 shots from the floor, including all four three point attempts. A game later, Saunders did the same to Bryant’s Dyami Starks—who came in as the nation’s leading scorer at 33.3 points a game. Starks had only 11 points as Saunders forced him into three turnovers, coming up with three steals and two blocks. On the offensive end, Saunders poured in 25 points on just nine shots.

Still, the junior credits the team behind him for his defensive success. Following the win against Bryant, Saunders said he tries in Amaker’s scheme to deny his man the ball and, if that fails, funnel him towards shot-blockers senior Kyle Casey and junior Steve Moundou-Missi. After the Green Bay victory, the junior said he tried to do the same thing against the shifty Sykes.

“[Sykes] is a great player,” Saunders said. “His quickness and ability to get the basket was phenomenal. It was a tough assignment. He is a great player and it was a group effort to defend him. My teammates were helping me out and we did a great job containing him.”

Saunders closed out the weekend by showing another side of his game. In 33 minutes against TCU, he attempted only five shots and finished with a team-high nine assists as the Crimson built a 29-point lead late in the first half and coasted to a 21-point victory.

Amaker said that the team came to the tournament looking to put its name in the rafters alongside major basketball powerhouses and former champions Kentucky, Arizona, and Duke. With the inspired play of Saunders and Moundou-Missi (38 points in three games), the Crimson became the first Ivy League team to win the tournament.

“It’s great to come here to a tournament that has such a great history with so many great players on so many great teams,” Amaker said. “We came this far and didn’t want to come out here without a [championship] win. We were able to do that against a great team.”