Weekend Contests Are Must-Wins

For the Harvard men’s basketball team to do something it has never done before, it must start by accomplishing something it hasn’t been able to do since 2000.

The Crimson closed the 1999-2000 season with a road sweep of Cornell and Columbia to move to 7-7 in the Ivies—the second of four consecutive years in which Harvard finished at .500 in league play.

Since those year-ending victories, the Crimson hasn’t swept an Ivy road weekend and has won Friday night’s game just four times in 16 chances.

After the loss to Yale over intersession, Harvard must sweep the Lions and Big Red or else face the prospect of entering next weekend’s showdown with Penn two games behind in the loss column.

“I hope that we’ve been able to impress upon the younger guys the importance of this roadtrip,” captain Matt Stehle said. “I said to the guys after Saturday’s win, [Yale] was kind of our mulligan. That was our one slip up, and you can’t have another slip up. You know Penn’s not going to slip up, and Yale’s probably not going to slip up again either. We really don’t have an option other than coming home with two.”

It’s difficult to point to any one identifying feature of the New York road trip as the Crimson’s stumbling block.

Over the past four seasons, Harvard holds a 2-2 mark in both Newman Arena (Cornell) and Levien Gym (Columbia).

It is also 2-2 both on Fridays and Saturdays, negating the theory that the heavy travel on Friday night hurts the team’s performance the following evening.

Also, the Crimson’s showings have little to do with the records of the Big Red or Lions, as last season Harvard beat a Cornell squad that finished 8-6 in the league in Ithaca before falling to a Columbia team that closed out the Ivy slate 3-11.

The Crimson opens up the road trip against the Lions tonight.

Columbia is led by forward John Baumann, who can give opponents trouble both inside and on the perimeter.

Baumann is the league’s fourth-leading scorer to this point, and he currently ranks fifth in the Ivies in field-goal percentage.

“He’s definitely a hard worker,” senior center Brian Cusworth said. “He’s definitely one of those workhorse, blue-collar-type guys by the way he plays.”

The Lions can also drop shots efficiently from long range.

Columbia leads the league in three-point shooting percentage and has the second most accurate shooter in the Ivy League—freshman shooting guard K.J. Matsui.

When Matsui and company miss, Baumann and sophomore Ben Nwachukwu are there to clean up the glass.

The duo has combined for nearly 12 boards per game as part of the league’s top rebounding squad.

“We take it personally going into every game to make sure that we dominate the boards, not just win them,” Cusworth said. “We know the importance of winning on the boards.”

The road trip takes the Crimson from the Ivy League’s best team on the boards to one of the worst, as Harvard travels to Ithaca tomorrow night.

Cornell has been out-rebounded by over three boards a game this season and has just one player, center Andrew Naeve, who has been pulling down more than five per contest.

But with a freshman point guard that just doesn’t miss, rebounding becomes less of an issue.

Adam Gore has vaulted to the forefront of the Rookie-of-the-Year debate by knocking down a league-leading 54 threes and ranking fifth in the league in points per game.

With point guard Graham Dow getting more minutes for the Big Red as of late, Gore has been able to move into more of a shooting guard role, and has responded by hitting double-digits in four of his last five games.

“He’s a great shooter,” junior guard Jim Goffredo said. “He takes a lot of tough shots, and he makes them from the outside. He’s got a good pull-up game too.”

Along with Gore, Cornell returns an All-Ivy first teamer in swingman Lenny Collins.

Collins is more than just an explosive scorer. He can rebound, dish out assists, and pick up some steals on defense.

Harvard struggled to contain Collins two years ago, as he racked up 50 points in two games.

But last year, the Crimson got a better handle on the All-Ivy talent, holding him to just 14 points in the two meetings.

“He’s been around for a while, and he knows how to play,” Stehle said. “He’s their best player in my mind. Gore might be leading them in scoring, but Collins is the key to their offense.”

—Staff writer Michael R. James can be reached at mrjames@fas.harvard.edu.