Category: Ivy League

Saunders, Harvard Escape Brown in Overtime

As an early loss to Dartmouth made clear, nothing will come easy in Harvard’s quest for a fifth straight Ivy League title. Visiting 0-4 Brown on Friday, the Crimson cruised to a double-digit lead in the first half — and promptly lost it in the second. Harvard needed a buzzer-beating basket to force overtime and eked out a 76-74 win, but questions abound heading into Saturday’s showdown at Yale.

The Crimson led by as many as 13 points until a Brown run cut the halftime gap to six. Coming out of intermission, Harvard’s starters committed turnovers on six straight possessions, allowing the Bears to take their first lead of the game and complete a 20-4 run. Neither team led by more than five points for the final 24 minutes of play.

Down the stretch, Friday’s game became a battle of starring guards. Brown point guard Tavon Blackmon played the best game of his career, shattering his previous high with 25 points on 7-12 shooting to go with nine assists. The sophomore took advantage of broken plays for some of his early points, but by the end of the game he was breaking down Harvard’s set defense himself.

Blackmon led the Bears’ offense, in flux after leading scorer Leland King’s departure, to 1.07 points per possession against the Ivy League’s stingiest defense. His spinning layup beat the shot clock to tie the game at 57-57 late, and his contested floater over Siyani Chambers gave Brown a lead in the final minute of regulation. “I think he’s really growing,” Brown coach Mike Martin said. “When we recruited him, we thought he was a guy who could be the best point guard in our league.”

But Blackmon’s buckets were often answered by Crimson star Wesley Saunders. The senior ended Harvard’s eight-minute scoring drought that spanned halftime; later in the half, he beat the shot clock with a hot-potato three-pointer that mirrored an early-season dagger against Boston University in both execution and game state.

And he made a game-saving shot at the end of regulation. After Blackmon split a pair of free throws with eight seconds left to go ahead 64-62, Saunders took a handoff from Chambers in the run of play, drove into the lane and missed an awkward floater — but he recovered to corral the rebound and lay it in at the buzzer, forcing overtime.

Wesley_Saunders_Harvard_Brown_buzzer-beater

He added five points in the extra period, and the Crimson made free throws and handled Brown’s pressure well enough to survive. Saunders scored 33 points — most for a Harvard player since Drew Housman did the same at Princeton in 2007 — to go with 10 rebounds and three steals. More importantly, he was seemingly Harvard’s only offense for long stretches, finishing with a 41% usage rating in 40 minutes.

Thanks to Saunders’ heroics, the Crimson remain one game behind unbeaten Yale, a gap they can close in New Haven on Saturday night. Three more thoughts from the Pizzitola Sports Center:

1. Friday in February is a tough time for tinkering. After keeping a fairly stable rotation through much of non-conference play, Harvard coach Tommy Amaker has become more creative with his lineups in recent weeks. Eleven players saw the floor in Friday’s first half alone, and the Crimson’s leader in minutes was Agunwa Okolie. After Steve Moundou-Missi fouled out in regulation, and with Kenyatta Smith still sidelined due to injury (Smith was dressed Friday but did not play), Harvard played small for most of the stretch run, even on a couple possessions in which Brown had big lineups.

Most puzzling was the usage of Siyani Chambers. The point guard has had a rough season statistically, but Harvard has been much better with Chambers on the floor, especially on offense. Yet he sat for more than seven straight minutes in the second half of a one-possession game. “It was a tough night for him with Blackmon,” Amaker said. “We made some switches to try to get different guys on [Blackmon], bigger guys.” (Down the stretch of regulation, Amaker also sat Chambers for only defensive possessions — which is more reasonable, if still debatable, especially since Brown’s shooting guards wouldn’t make cross-matching too dangerous.)

Harvard survived that stretch Friday, coming out ahead 14-11, but all evidence suggests benching Chambers is a losing bet. Juggling Harvard’s frontcourt is a true challenge for Amaker, between injuries, varying skill sets and foul trouble (which figures to be a problem against Yale), but Chambers and Saunders should simply play as much as possible.

2. The Bears could have sealed the game with better defensive rebounding. Brown has been roughly average on the glass this season, but it got killed by the Crimson, surrendering 20 offensive rebounds on 38 opportunities. Jonah Travis took the most advantage, grabbing five missed shots off the bench. Harvard’s two biggest plays of the game — a shooting foul drawn by Travis on the penultimate possession of regulation and Saunders’ game-winner — both came on second chances.

3. Brown is a really good 0-5 team. Even after losing King for the season, the Bears haven’t gone into hibernation. Despite playing the league’s toughest schedule to date, Brown went to the wire at Yale and has been ahead or tied in the second half of its last four games. Blackmon hasn’t yet shown consistent greatness, but if he and Cedric Kuakumensah (15 points, four blocks) can play something like they did Friday, the Bears will win a few of their remaining games (possibly starting Saturday against Dartmouth).

“I like the way we fought, and I like the character of our team,” Martin said. “I really don’t think we’re far away. I know our record would tell you we are, but I like the fight we have in that locker room.”

Three Thoughts: Yale 81, Dartmouth 66 (Harvard Coming Saturday)

As it always does in the 14-Game Tournament, the Ivy League keeps throwing hurdles of different shapes and sizes at Yale, and so far at least, the Bulldogs have cleared them all. Friday, Dartmouth set up their obstacle in the middle of the paint and Yale went right around it, shooting 13-21 from three-point range to post a fairly comfortable 81-66 victory over the pesky Big Green at Lee Amphitheater.

The Bulldogs (16-6 overall) now stand at 5-0 in the Ivy League and will host rival and three-time defending Ivy champ Harvard Saturday night in what is expected to be a sellout.

Continue reading “Three Thoughts: Yale 81, Dartmouth 66 (Harvard Coming Saturday)” →

Ivy League Weekly Roundup: Feb. 2

What Happened Last Week: Yale swept Columbia and Cornell on the road, improving to 4-0. Harvard recovered from last week’s upset with wins at Princeton and Penn, keeping pace at 3-1. Princeton is in the mix at 2-1, as are Cornell and Columbia at 2-2, but the Ivy League still looks like a two-team race. Continue reading “Ivy League Weekly Roundup: Feb. 2” →

Quick Thoughts From “Super Saturday”

There were 151 Division I basketball games played yesterday, as teams tried to avoid tonight’s Super Bowl — except if you’re most of the MAAC. Here is my takeaway from eight area games. Continue reading “Quick Thoughts From “Super Saturday”” →

Not Vintage, But Much Needed Win For Harvard Over Princeton

We all know that you don’t get any points from expectations because we’ve heard that from favorites forever, we rarely hear about the flip side of that theorem. You can’t lose any points for your perceived status either.

So while Harvard’s 75-72 win at Jadwin Gym over Princeton Friday night won’t silence many of the detractors who have seen the Crimson appear much more vulnerable than at any point in the last three seasons, and it certainly won’t get them back to a national ranking any time soon, it is indeed a victory and pushes the Crimson to 2-1 in the Ivy League, a game behind Yale with 11 still to go in the 14 game Ivy tournament (and two head-to-head meetings with the Bulldogs still left).

Continue reading “Not Vintage, But Much Needed Win For Harvard Over Princeton” →

Yale’s Veterans Help Them Survive Brown, Move To Top Of Ivy

There was good, bad, and plenty of ugly for Yale Saturday afternoon against Brown, as the Bulldogs looked alternately confused and frustrated as a double-digit favorite against a Bears team it had run off its home court a week before.

Brown didn’t even have its leading scorer and biggest offensive threat in Leland King, either, and yet somehow Yale found itself down six at the half, and when Javier Duren missed a wide open breakaway dunk that allowed Tavon Blackmon to score seconds later, Brown looked like they may steal it.

Continue reading “Yale’s Veterans Help Them Survive Brown, Move To Top Of Ivy” →

Dartmouth Shocks Harvard With Second-Half Comeback

With 13 minutes left in Saturday’s game at Lavietes Pavilion, it seemed the Crimson would follow their usual path to victory. After a gritty, low-scoring first half, the hosts had exploded out of halftime to take a 14-point lead over Dartmouth. Surely the hosts would close out the game with suffocating defense, just as they had against Northeastern, against Boston University, and against the Big Green two weeks earlier.

This time, Dartmouth turned the tables. Over the next 10 minutes, the visitors reeled off an astounding 26-2 run, holding on for a 70-61 victory and the first upset of this Ivy League season.

According to Ken Pomeroy’s win probability calculator, Harvard had about a 98% chance to win when it led 43-29 in the second half. Several factors caused the Big Green’s comeback, their first victory over Harvard in six years:

Harvard’s energy lapsed at key points. Wesley Saunders had smothered leading scorer Alex Mitola throughout the first half, but when Malik Gill fell to the floor on a drive early in Dartmouth’s run, Saunders paused, perhaps expecting a traveling violation. A two-pass sequence found Mitola on the right wing, where he swished a three-pointer over Saunders’ late closeout. Later in the half, after a turnover in the paint, Gabas Maldunas beat all five Crimson players down the court for an uncontested, game-tying layup.

“They were playing harder,” Saunders said. “They were scrapping and fighting the whole game. We came out with a lot of energy to start the second half, but we couldn’t sustain it throughout.”

The Crimson’s lineup issues, a recurring theme this season, struck again. Harvard played the unproven Matt Brown and Chris Egi together midway through the half, then removed sharpshooter Corbin Miller with its offense sputtering, and finally finished the game with a four-guard lineup that has struggled this year. Even in the right situations, players came up short — Miller missed three open treys, and the team went 0-4 from the free-throw line during Dartmouth’s run.

“We’ve gone into offensive droughts, and that has hurt us,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said. “But we had opportunities to convert in transition … we had chances to finish around the rim. We didn’t do enough of what we needed to do.”

Most importantly, Dartmouth made the right adjustments. After coming off the bench and playing just nine minutes in the first half, Malik Gill was on the floor for the game’s final 16 minutes, giving the Big Green a spark on both ends.

Gill used his speed to disrupt Harvard’s defense: He notched a game-high six assists, and drove through a zone for a layup and one that fouled out Steve Moundou-Missi and gave Dartmouth the lead for good.  And he also used his notoriously quick hands: Twice tasked with defending Saunders in the post, the 5’9” guard poked the ball away both times, leading to run-outs for the Big Green.

Those plays were part of a larger Dartmouth strategy to mix up defensive looks, holding Harvard to 39% shooting and 18 turnovers. “If you let them run what they want to do on a consistent basis, it’s tough. They’re too talented and too well-coached,” Dartmouth coach Paul Cormier said. “But if we can sometimes have a little scatterbug like Malik, whose hands are always going … it’s a lot tougher.”

Dartmouth scored only 10 points in the first 12 minutes, thanks largely to Harvard’s fearsome interior defense. The Big Green made only one of their first nine shots from the post or restricted area; they finished the first half 4-14 there, but they started drawing fouls in the paint.

Dartmouth_shot_chart_Harvard_1H

However, the Big Green were perfect at the basket in their second-half run, getting clean looks in transition and from offensive rebounds. Meanwhile, they also heated up from outside, including two Miles Wright three-pointers that capped the 26-2 spurt.

Dartmouth_shot_chart_Harvard_2H

“We were able to get some turnovers and score off those turnovers,” Cormier said. “We didn’t have to run our offense all night against their very solid, five-on-five defense. They’re very tough to score on five-on-five, but tonight we were able to create some situations off our defense.”

Harvard isn’t panicking yet. Two games into a 14-game season is too early for that; besides, new Ivy favorite Yale nearly lost at home to shorthanded Brown at the same time as the Crimson went down. “We’re not discouraged. We know there’s still a lot of season to go,” Saunders said.

But there is no conference tournament in the Ivy League, and four of the last five champions have had two or fewer losses. That likely won’t happen this year; as Saturday’s results showed, there are no dominant teams, and the rest of the league has improved considerably. With four straight road games ahead, however — including trips to Princeton and Yale — the Crimson’s path to a fifth straight title looks much more difficult.