Men's Basketball Hunts for .500 Against Princeton, Penn

The last time the Harvard men’s basketball team entered the Palestra, it was in a much different place.

Facing Yale in a one-game playoff to claim a spot in the NCAA tournament, the Crimson played to a 51-51 tie. Then, with nine seconds remaining, Steve Moundou-Missi ’15 received a pass from Wesley Saunders ’15 and scored a mid-range jumper for the win, sending Harvard dancing for the fourth straight season.

This year, however, the Crimson returns to the Palestra with the situation turned on its head. Heading into back-to-back contests against Princeton (12-5, 2-1 Ivy League) and Penn (6-11, 0-3), Harvard (9-11, 1-3) is scraping just to get to .500.

The Crimson will look to bounce back after falling last Friday to Cornell and last Saturday to Columbia, on a buzzer beater by the Lions’ Alex Rosenberg. Last weekend marked the first time that Harvard had been swept in an Ivy home weekend since 2009.

“Coach always says the only thing better than winning a conference game is winning a conference game on the road,” senior Patrick Steeves said. “So I think two big wins against two good teams would be huge for us.

The last time the Crimson faced Penn at the Palestra, the team limited the Quakers (6-11, 0-3) to just 38 points. Among Ivy League teams, Penn is unique in at least two ways: it is the only team without a conference win and the only team without a player in the top 10 of league scoring.

Despite failing to put a mark in the win column through three conference games, the Quakers are not a team that can be counted as an automatic win. In its Ivy opener, Penn forced Princeton into overtime before eventually falling by two.

One area in which Harvard has struggled mightily, especially in Ivy League play, is foul shooting. In conference play, the Crimson shoots 46.6 percent from the charity stripe; overall this rate is 57.8 percent.

Nationwide the next worst team, University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, shoots over two percentage points higher—and has a 5-18 record.

What started as a problem limited to frontcourt players like junior Zena Edosomwan and sophomore Chris Egi (46.3 percent combined) has spread throughout the roster. Down the stretch last weekend, both Steeves and junior Corbin Miller missed key free throws against Columbia.

To get to Philadelphia, however, the team will need to go through Princeton, one of three teams picked above Harvard in the preseason media poll.

The programs present a conflict of styles, as the Tigers enter the game with the second-highest scoring offense in the Ancient Eight at 77.0 points per game, while the Crimson boasts the second-best scoring defense, allowing 66.3 points per game.

“We really have to do a good job defending the lines, meaning defending the three point line, and not fouling them and letting them get to the foul line,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said.

A good defensive game will start with limiting junior Henry Caruso, the third-leading scorer in the Ancient Eight at 16.6 points per game. Senior forward Agunwa Okolie, the team’s best perimeter defender, will likely be tasked with guarding Caruso.

However, the Okolie-Caruso matchup alone will not determine the contest. It will take a complete effort from the Crimson, who did not put together consecutive quality halves last weekend, to come out with a win.

Twice in three conference losses, Harvard has seen a double-digit lead disappear. In the other, it fought back from a 15-point halftime deficit, only to give back the lead with a poor closing stretch.

In that game, against the Big Red, the starting rotation of Okolie, Cummins, Edosomwan, and freshmen Corey Johnson and Tommy McCarthy used less than eight minutes to even the score, but when Amaker went to the bench to give the starters a rest, the progress slowed significantly. Not a single bench player scored a point.

“We ask a lot of our starters,” said Steeves, the team’s highest-scoring reserve. “Guys like Zena have been having breakout seasons and defenses are focusing on them and so I think just for [the bench] to be able to get in there and kind of take some pressure off maybe is something we need to do a better job of this weekend.”

Though the Crimson is on the outside looking in at the top of the Ancient Eight, the round-robin nature of the 14-game conference season means that any team can compete with any opponent on a given night.

“The league is really crazy, so the worst thing you can do is not be prepared for a game on any given night,” Okolie said. “[We’re] focusing on ways to win games this weekend, and hopefully things will work out.”

—Staff writer Theresa C. Hebert can be reached at theresa.hebert@thecrimson.com.