Northeastern Pulls Away in Second Half, Tops Men's Hoops, 80-71

UPDATED: December 2, 2015, at 11:40 p.m.

BOSTON—Neither the Harvard defense nor two lengthy delays to repair a malfunctioning shot clock could slow down a hot-shooting Northeastern offense on Wednesday night. The Huskies (6-1) opened up a big second-half lead to cruise to a 80-71 victory over the Crimson (2-5) on a night where the hosts shot 43 percent from the field and made 10 three-pointers.

The first half was by far Harvard’s most productive half of the season offensively as the team shot 62 percent from the field, but turnovers and uncharacteristically weak defense plagued the Crimson.

“I thought we saw some steps forward from where we’ve been and some encouraging things that we were able to see here tonight,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said. “Certainly they are a good basketball team and deserved to win.”

A layup by Northeastern senior guard David Walker to beat the halftime buzzer put the Huskies up four, and the hosts never looked back. After the Crimson made 17 of its first 24 field goal attempts, Northeastern began to look more like the team that beat then-No. 15 Miami on the road last week. The Huskies outscored Harvard 50-33 in game’s final 24:14 and forced a total of 15 Crimson turnovers on the evening.

With the referees calling a tight game, Harvard picked up 13 team fouls in the first half, forcing Amaker to tinker with his traditional rotation. Nonetheless, freshman forward Weisner Perez and senior forward Patrick Steeves willed the Crimson to a nine-point lead with 6:47 to go in the first half. The duo, which had combined for all of 95 collegiate minutes before Wednesday, registered a total of 26 points and seven rebounds in 39 minutes.

“[Pat]’s playing with a sense of urgency, being a senior and a guy who hasn’t played much in his career due to injuries, so I think every bit of time that he gets is very meaningful for him,” Amaker said.

“Weisner in particular was pretty productive for us,” he added. “Thirteen points in 12 minutes. That’s pretty darn good for a guy coming off the bench and being a freshman.”

Two Northeastern runs, however, headlined the first 20 minutes. The first, an 8-2 outburst, cut the Harvard lead to three with 3:46 remaining in the frame before a separate 9-0 run to end the half put the game out of the Crimson’s reach for good.

Senior guard Quincy Ford led the Huskies with 22 points and 10 rebounds, but it was Northeastern’s balance that doomed Harvard as five different Huskies tallied eight or more points. The 43 percent shooting clip, 10 three-pointers, and 80 points are all season-highs for a Crimson opponent this season.

For the second game in a row, freshman guard Corey Johnson struggled to find his rhythm offensively. Johnson finished with three points on just one-for-seven shooting in 23 minutes. The first-year was held to six points in Sunday’s loss to Holy Cross after having averaged nearly 10 points through the team’s first five games.

After the Huskies set the tone following intermission with success in their inside-out game, Northeastern capitalized on the spaced out Harvard defense to dominate the glass and the paint for the rest of the evening. The Huskies finished with 38 rebounds, including 14 on the offensive glass. After Northeastern grew its lead to 17 before the under-four media timeout, the Crimson ended the game on a 13-5 run.

“I think Harvard is one of the best defensive teams that we’ve faced,” Northeastern coach Bill Coen said. “They’re just so sound fundamentally on that end of the floor. We were just fortunate, I thought, on the offensive end. We made a lot of threes, and we were aggressive going to the basket and made our free throws.”

Sparking the late surge for Harvard were junior forward Zena Edosomwan and freshman point guard Tommy McCarthy. The junior finished the game with 18 points and seven rebounds, but only one came on the offensive end, and Edosomwan only went to the line once.

As a team, the Crimson took just eight free throws attempts and converted only three for the second straight game. No Harvard guard went to the line on Wednesday. For the season, the team is shooting just 57 percent from the charity stripe.

McCarthy had nine assists to go along with eight points on 3-for-5 shooting. The nine dimes were a career high-for the freshman on a night where the Crimson logged 25 assists on its 31 made field goals.

—Staff writer Stephen J. Gleason can be reached at sgleason@college.harvard.edu.