Tag: Harvard

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.”

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” →

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.

Ivy League Weekly Roundup: Jan. 19

What Happened Last Week: Yale opened Ivy League play with an impressive 80-62 victory at Brown. Despite committing 23 turnovers and nearly throwing away a six-point lead in the final minute, Columbia edged Cornell 48-45 on the road. In non-league play, Penn beat Niagara and was competitive with No. 5 Villanova, while Harvard’s six-game win streak against Boston College ended in overtime.

Three Thoughts:

1. Yale looked a lot like last year’s team at Brown, relying heavily on offensive rebounding, free throws and Justin Sears. The junior saw several layups spin out and shot just 7-16 from the line, but he still finished with 15 points and 11 rebounds; meanwhile, the visitors earned 37 free throws and grabbed 15 offensive boards. The Bulldogs’ shooting is much improved this season (thanks largely to Javier Duren and Jack Montague, who combined for 34 points), so if they can get to the line and control the glass like they did last year, they will be very tough to beat.

2. The Lions had a great defensive gameplan against Cornell, and they needed every bit of it to escape Ithaca with a win. Columbia often brought four or five defenders into the paint to stop drives, daring the Big Red to beat them with ball movement. The hosts instead settled for off-balance jumpers, taking only 12 of their 52 shots at the rim (most of which were well contested). Cornell made four field goals in the first half and scored .71 points per possession, allowing Columbia to lead wire-to-wire despite an ugly offensive performance of its own (including zero points from a foul-plagued Maodo Lo). 

Columbia-Cornell in a nutshell. (Video via Ivy League Digital Network)
Columbia-Cornell in a nutshell. (Video via Ivy League Digital Network)

3. The Ivy League announced a national TV package last week. Five men’s basketball games (and one women’s game) will be shown on CBS Sports Network, and several others will be syndicated on American Sports Network, which produces games to air on local networks. With fewer games and shorter notice, this marks a downgrade from last year’s package on NBC Sports Network, but at this late stage, it’s much better than nothing. The CBSSN package features each team at least once, though both Harvard-Yale showdowns are notably absent (one is on ASN).

Weekly Awards:

Player of the Week: Javier Duren, Yale — Duren beat the Bears in many ways on Saturday. He used his speed to get into the lane, his strength to outmuscle Tavon Blackmon in the post, and his touch to hit a pair of three-pointers. The senior point guard finished with a game-high 19 points, 10 rebounds and three assists (plus several other passes that went unfinished at the rim).

Rookie of the Week: Antonio Woods, Penn — Against fifth-ranked Villanova, Woods came off the bench but led the Quakers in minutes, scoring 18 points on 7-12 shooting. His heroics helped the Quakers stay within one possession through 30 minutes.

The Week Ahead: Three sets of travel partners complete their home-and-home series, with Brown visiting Yale, Cornell visiting Columbia and Harvard visiting Dartmouth. (We will be covering all three games on Saturday.) Given that all three of this week’s home teams won their openers on the road, the favorites are clear, but crazy things can happen in these series.

Power Rankings:

  1. Harvard (1-0) — Ivy play may be approaching, but Tommy Amaker’s recruiting machine hasn’t stopped: 2016 power forward Chris Lewis, the nation’s #44 prospect per ESPN, committed to the Crimson Sunday.
  2. Yale (1-0) — Though Brown’s matchups often kept Sears away from the basket defensively in first half, he finished with five blocked shots. Sears is my midseason Defensive Player of the Year, followed by Steve Moundou-Missi and Wesley Saunders. (Edit: I forgot about Shonn Miller, who would be right with Sears for DPOY.)
  3. Columbia (1-0) — Kendall Jackson was a surprise hero for Columbia. After playing just 12 minutes in the Lions’ previous nine games, he spelled Maodo Lo for much of Saturday, banging two three-pointers and finishing with eight points.
  4. Cornell (0-1) — The Big Red’s defense continues to be an amazing story, now 87th nationally per KenPom after ranking 350th a year ago. But their offense is now 305th. Cornell has scored .75 points per possession or less in three of its last five D-I games; remarkably, they still nearly won two of those (an OT loss to Saint Peter’s and Saturday’s loss to Columbia).
  5. Princeton (1-0) — With the Tigers off for exam break, here’s a long-overdue spotlight on their women’s team, which is 17-0 and #19 in the AP poll. The Tigers have won four Ivy championships under head coach Courtney Banghart, but they’ve yet to win an NCAA tournament game. This year is their best chance yet: With convincing wins over good Michigan and Pitt squads, Princeton is ranked sixth nationally in the Sagarin ratings.
  6. Dartmouth (0-1) — After a close loss at Vermont, Dartmouth did what Michigan and Yale couldn’t: Beat NJIT. The Big Green have shot just 30% from three-point range over their last three games, however, which they’ll need to turn around to make noise in Ivy play.
  7. Brown (0-1) — The Bears played at home, committed only 11 turnovers, and were still blown out in their Ivy opener, thanks to Yale’s 1.16 points per possession. Brown’s defense is probably the biggest disappointment of the Ivy League this year.
  8. Penn (0-1) — Penn’s freshmen continue to impress this season. Woods stole the spotlight against Villanova, but Mike Auger scored eight points with a team-high nine rebounds, a few days after getting seven boards and two steals in 21 minutes at Niagara.

Ivy League Weekly Roundup: Jan. 12

What Happened Last Week: Princeton and Harvard opened Ivy League play with victories over their travel partners (see more below). Columbia and Yale dropped non-conference games to Stony Brook and NJIT, respectively. Cornell and Princeton dispatched midweek foes at home, and Brown’s offense sputtered in a 1-1 week. Continue reading “Ivy League Weekly Roundup: Jan. 12” →

Ivy League Weekly Roundup: Jan. 5

What Happened Last Week: Yale nearly beat a second major-conference team, leading for almost the entire second half at Vanderbilt, but the Bulldogs surrendered a five-point lead in the final minute and fell in double overtime. Other Ivies lost by double digits against higher-level competition (Penn at La Salle, Princeton at Wake Forest, Brown at Rhode Island, Cornell at Syracuse), while Columbia fell to St. Francis Brooklyn. The conference finished the week 3-7, all in true road games. Continue reading “Ivy League Weekly Roundup: Jan. 5” →

Ivy League Weekly Roundup: Dec. 29

What Happened Last Week: The Ivy League went 0-4 against major-conference competition, headlined by Columbia’s competitive loss to UConn and Harvard’s 56-46 defeat at Arizona State. But the Ancient Eight took care of everyone else, going 5-1 in its other games; Ivies have now won 10 of their last 13 games against mid-major opponents. Continue reading “Ivy League Weekly Roundup: Dec. 29” →