The Back Page's Athlete of 2011 Results: Ortiz v. Wright

2011 was a big year in Harvard athletics. Women’s soccer captured its third Ivy League championship in four years. The men’s basketball team took home a share of the Ancient Eight title and entered the nation’s Top 25, both firsts in program history. Football set a modern-era program record for points in a season, scoring 374 points en route to a 9-1 finish and a league crown. Four other teams—men’s fencing, men’s heavyweight and lightweight crew, and softball—also finished 2011 on top of the Ivy League standings.

There were a number of standout individual performances as well. Women’s fencer Alexandra Kiefer captured the NCAA Foil Individual title. Men’s basketball forward Keith Wright became just the second player in Harvard history to take home Ivy League Player of the Year honors. Women’s soccer and lacrosse captain Melanie Baskind was named to the First Team All-Ivy in two different sports and was selected as the Ivy League Player of the Year in soccer.

We at The Back Page have taken on the tall task of determining the best Harvard athlete of 2011. Here’s how it will go down: we’ve selected 16 standout Harvard athletes—eight male and eight female—and set up two single elimination brackets. Each round, Harvard’s finest will square off in head-to-head matchups. And based on their performances in 2011, we will determine who advances and who is eliminated until just one male and one female remain. Then, the two champs will square off to determine the top Harvard athlete of 2011.

Recently we released the first-round winners on the male side of the bracket. Today, we reveal the winner of our first semifinal matchup between football's Josue Ortiz and men's basketball's Keith Wright.

Check back all this week as we go through our selections.

Josue Ortiz v. Keith Wright

This one couldn’t have been much tighter. Both were Ivy League MVPs. Both played a key role in winning the Ancient Eight title for their respective teams. Both are the best to play at their position at Harvard in recent memory.

And both have a knack for the clutch. In the title-clincher against Penn, Josue Ortiz had perhaps his best game of 2011, tallying 10 tackles and two sacks while forcing and recovering a key, momentum-changing fumble. In a shootout against Cornell that was much closer than previously expected, Ortiz helped keep Big Red quarterback Jeff Mathews in check with two sacks.

Not to be outdone, Keith Wright played lights-out in the Ivy season, averaging nearly a double-double in the second half of the season. Wright’s two biggest games of the year couldn’t have come at a better time. His 25-point performance was the difference in an 83-82 win at Penn’s Palestra, and the then-junior put up 22 points two games later in a near-loss to Ivy cellar-dweller Brown. After trailing at the half, Harvard ended up on top, 85-78. A loss in either game would’ve effectively shot the Crimson’s chances of taking the league title.

Wright, though, struggled for much of the first half of the 2011-12 season.  In a key matchup against UConn, he struggled against the Huskies’ big men, going three for 10 from the field, finishing with just nine points. And in the Crimson’s crushing loss to Fordham, the 6’8 forward only had eight points.

Ortiz didn’t look overmatched once all year, and even when double-teamed, the fifth-year senior still dominated the pass rush. All year long, no one had an answer for him. While he led the Ivies with 10 sacks, he also opened holes for his teammates by drawing multiple opposing offensive linemen, helping Harvard finish with the stingiest rush defense in the league.

Winner: Josue Ortiz