Comeback Falls Short as Cornell Drops Crimson

The raucous home crowd truly believed that its men’s basketball team could win—but the hopes of an upset lasted only a moment.

After a three from freshman guard Christian Webster brought Harvard (17-6, 6-3 Ivy) to within five points of the two-time defending Ivy champions, Cornell seniors Ryan Wittman and Louis Dale hit back-to-back threes to stifle the Crimson comeback, helping the Big Red (22-4, 8-1) pull away to a 79-70 victory at Lavietes Pavilion Friday night.

“It’s no question that that was, I thought, the biggest moment in the game,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said. “We fought back and dug ourselves out of that hole and got it to that position…Dale made a number of shots I thought were very tough, and so did Wittman. What are you going to do?”

In front of a sell-out crowd of 2,195 that featured numerous members of the national media as well as over a dozen NBA scouts, both teams put on a show, but in the end, Cornell’s headliners generated most of the highlights.

Wittman finished with game-highs of 27 points and eight rebounds, and Dale added 20 points to go along with a game-high five assists. The veteran pair of two-time first-team All-Ivy selections combined to shoot over 50 percent from the field, including 10 three-pointers that demoralized their young opponents.

Harvard’s own star, co-captain Jeremy Lin, led his team with 24 points and went 10-of-11 from the free throw line, but he wasn’t able to will his squad to a dramatic comeback.

Freshman Kyle Casey was the team’s second-leading scorer with a hard-fought 14 points. Lin and Casey went a combined 0-for-5 from behind the arc, where it seemed as if the opposition couldn’t miss.

After heading into halftime with a nine-point advantage, the Big Red led by as much as 17 with 12 minutes to play in the second half, but a 12-0 Crimson spurt brought the home crowd to its feet four minutes later.

Freshman guard Brandyn Curry sparked the run with a long-distance bomb—one of only two threes that Harvard would make on the night. The defensively-minded rookie then poked the ball away from Wittman at the other end of the floor and converted at the line after being fouled on the ensuing fast break.

Curry added a block on a Dale drive on the following possession, and pairs of free throws by Lin and Curry cut the deficit to eight with just under nine minutes to go.

A Dale three then went long off the rim, and Harvard pushed the ball hard in transition, setting up Webster’s shot from the deep left corner and triggering a Big Red timeout—along with the student section’s “I believe that we will win” chant.

But the veteran Cornell team—all but one of its starters are seniors—maintained its composure, and, fittingly, it was Wittman and Dale who extinguished the hot hands of the Crimson.

Immediately after the timeout, Wittman nailed a three-pointer off a screen on the right wing. After Lin missed a long-range try of his own, Dale followed off the dribble with another dagger.

“We had a couple of good possessions, and you could feel that we were starting to come back, and they just hit two big shots,” Curry said. “That was kind of the theme of the night—every time we got it back close, they would hit a huge shot, so give credit to them.”

The deficit now back into double-digits, Harvard could not muster another surge to overcome the visiting marksmen, who nailed a dozen treys on the night.

Though two free throws by Webster brought his team within seven points at the 5:09 mark, Cornell immediately fired back with a jumper by tri-captain center Jeff Foote and a three by Wittman to keep the Crimson at bay for good.

In a matchup billed by many to be the one of the most important games in the history of Harvard men’s basketball, the Crimson struggled with turnovers in the first half, giving the ball away 12 times.

It would turn it over only once more after intermission, but allowing second-chance opportunities became a problem. Eight of Cornell’s 14 offensive rebounds came in the final frame, while Harvard had only three for the game.

Sophomore big man Keith Wright made his return from a two-week layoff due to Achilles tendonitis but saw only 16 minutes of action off the bench.

Senior Pat Magnarelli did not play but said after the game that he would definitely return next weekend at home against Brown and Yale.

—Staff writer Dennis J. Zheng can be reached at dzheng12@college.harvard.edu.