Men's Basketball Tied For Last in Ivy League With Loss to Penn

PHILADELPHIA—In his discussions with the team, Harvard coach Tommy Amaker often stresses two things—playing balanced offense and coming out hot in the first four minutes of each half.

One team did that on Saturday night, it just wasn’t Amaker’s.

After jumping out to a 7-0 lead in the first two minutes, the Crimson (9-13, 1-5 Ivy League) couldn’t maintain its level of play, falling to Penn (8-11, 2-3), 67-57. The game was Harvard’s fifth consecutive Ivy loss, and the fourth time the team has fallen by a double-digit margin since beginning conference play.

“I don’t think anybody expected this,” senior forward Patrick Steeves said. “You talk about us playing Kansas close, playing Oklahoma, getting to the final of the Diamond Head Classic. It’s crazy how it can kind of unravel.”

While the game was mostly close throughout the first half, Penn took a two-point lead from the locker room and widened the margin to nine with a 12-5 run in the first four minutes of the second frame. In the last sixteen minutes, the Quakers never relinquished the lead.

Penn kicked off the half with a layup from senior center Darien Nelson-Henry to put the Quakers up 29-25. A pair of free throws from sophomore forward Chris Egi and a one-for-two trip to the line from senior forward Agunwa Okolie pulled Harvard back within one, but junior guard Matt Howard negated the free throws with a three just under a minute later. Penn then went on a quick 7-2 spur, capped by another Howard jumper, before the U-16 timeout.

“Basketball’s a game of runs,” Amaker said. “You’re hopeful that you can have more than your opponent and certainly that was one that they had against us and got the lead.”

Throughout the game, Penn was able to run an inside-out offense through Nelson-Henry. Without junior forward Zena Edosomwan, the Crimson was outsized in the paint and unable to slow Nelson-Henry, as the senior ended the night with 18 points.

But the scoring went farther than Nelson-Henry. While the team shot just 22 percent from behind the arc, Penn was able to spread the floor, with Nelson-Henry, Howard, and freshman Max Rothschild all finishing with double-doubles. Freshman Jake Silpe tallied nine points of his own, including a three-point play to break the ice for the Quakers in the first half and a three at the 16:39 mark in the second to put Penn up nine early in the second frame.

The Crimson offense, on the other hand, found itself struggling to spread the floor without Edosomwan on the offensive end. The team finished with just 26 points in the paint, compared to 46 for the Quakers. When Edosomwan is on the floor, he is able to post up in the paint and occupy interior defenders, but the smaller frontcourt on the floor Saturday night relied more on drives and hook shots in the paint that failed to draw defenders away from outside shooters.

Outside the paint, Harvard struggled even more. Freshman guard Corey Johnson and junior guard Corbin Miller have been two of the Crimson’s hottest shooters this season, but on Saturday the duo shot a combined three-for-19 from deep. Johnson got off to a quick start in the first half, makes two triples in the first four minutes, but hit just one other trey in his remaining 27 minutes on the floor.

“When we get good, open looks by Corbin we want him to take them every time. If it rattles out, it rattles out,” Steeves said. “What is demoralizing is giving up an offensive rebound, silly foul, silly turnover that leads to two points on the break. If you take those out, we feel the game is going to be different.”

But the team was even more disappointed in its rebounding. Amaker and the Crimson have consistently emphasized that defense and rebounding set the tempo for the game. If the players are putting in consistent effort in those two areas, the coach preaches, offense will follow. While open shots weren’t falling, it was the lopsided rebounding that the team found more concerning. Without the league’s leading rebounder in Edosomwan, the Quakers outrebounded Harvard 53-32, led by 18 boards from Nelson-Henry.

With the loss, Harvard is tied with Dartmouth for last in the Ivy League, a place the five-time defending champion isn’t used to being.

“Everyone wants a piece of us, there’s no question,” Steeves said. “We’ve been running the league for a while and every time that these teams beat us, it means something to them. It should mean something to us to not let them do that.”

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