Men's Basketball Prepares to Host Brown and Yale

After consecutive wins against the Killer Ps, the Harvard men’s basketball team (17-3, 4-0 Ivy) finds itself in a familiar position. For the fourth straight season, the Crimson has won its first four games of conference play, leading the pack after the first quarter of Ancient Eight play as it prepares to take on Brown (11-7, 3-1) and Yale (9-9, 3-1) this weekend at Lavietes Pavilion.

However, as has often been written in these pages, this Harvard team is different. The Crimson is outscoring its opponents by over 20 points a game in conference play—which, if it holds up, would smash the record of the 2009-2010 Cornell Big Red (15.4 point margin of victory) as the standard for modern league dominance.

Coming into the weekend, co-captain Laurent Rivard emphasized that the team is not concerned with history but with whichever team that lies ahead.

“We are in the driver’s seat right now, but we have to take it one game at a time,” Rivard said. “We have two teams coming in that are 3-1, so it is a huge weekend, and we really need to take care of business.”Harvard has won, as coach Tommy Amaker stressed, thanks to its bench and balance. The team scores the second-most points per game among Ivies despite having just one player (junior Wesley Saunders) among the top 15 conference scoring leaders. Five different players average at least nine points a game, and in conference play Harvard is shooting nearly 54 percent from the floor. “I don’t worry about us looking one-dimensional,” Amaker said. “Who knows who it will be Friday night or Saturday night who will be the difference for us?”

The Crimson has taken advantage of a deep bench to spread the ball around. Co-captain Brandyn Curry has averaged 8.9 points a game, while junior reserves Jonah Travis and sophomore Agunwa Okolie both led the team in scoring in separate nonconference games. Freshman Zena Edosomwan has shown signs of development as of late, scoring 10 points against Penn on Saturday.

The team’s abundance of weapons has meant, according to Amaker, that there is no one player the squad looks to for scoring. “We want the go-to guy to be the open guy,” Amaker said. “I learned that years ago following the Celtics…. For me that’s the beauty of a team sport, especially in basketball.” Both strengths will be key for Harvard this weekend against two deep Ivy League squads. Nine different Bulldogs average at least ten minutes a game, and eight different Bears put up at least six points a night.

Harvard’s two opponents will come into Cambridge after sweeping Cornell and Columbia last weekend. Overall, both Yale and Brown have won four of their last five matchups, the lone losses coming against one another.

While the Crimson went 4-0 against the two teams last year, only one of the wins—a 65-47 triumph over the Bears—came in double digits. When the two teams came to Lavietes last year, Harvard twice saw double-digit halftime leads slip away. Against the Bears, a 22-point Harvard lead disappeared in the second half behind a flurry of threes from junior guard Sean McGonagill. The Crimson prevailed in double overtime, 89-82, but McGonagill—the Ivy League’s leading scorer this year—put up 20 points and eight assists.

“We know how hard [Brown] has played us and how challenging our games have been,” Amaker said. “We have played some incredibly entertaining games against Brown and their ability to score has always been something that concerns us. McGonagill is a kid that puts up big numbers. That’s dangerous because he can carry them.”

Against the Bulldogs, Harvard will focus on containing sophomore Justin Sears. The forward is fourth in the league in scoring at 15.3 points a game and gets to the free throw line better than anyone else in the Ancient Eight, averaging over seven free throw attempts a game.

Amaker said, however, that Yale—which has two of the league’s top 10 scorers—is much more than a one-man team.

“We have said this internally: we think they are as deep and talented as anyone in our league,” Amaker said. “They are athletic, they’re big. [Junior Javier] Duren is 6’4”, and he’s the point guard. They are as talented as anyone in our league. They return most of their players and [were] picked to finish third. And I’m sure they looked at it as a slight, and we are going to have our hands full this weekend.”

—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at david.freed@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twtter at @CrimsonDPFreed.