Harvard Edges Out Penn in Final Minutes for Third Straight Ivy Victory

The Harvard men’s basketball team beat the University of Pennsylvania by a score of 64-63 on Monday for its third straight victory, pushing the squad to a conference record of 3-1 and putting it in a three-way tie with Dartmouth and Yale for the top spot in the Ancient Eight.

The Crimson (10-8, 3-1 Ivy) secured the one-point win over the Quakers (9-8, 2-2) in a match that was close throughout, with 10 ties and nine lead changes as neither team managed to create a double-digit advantage at any point in the game.

Regardless of how gritty the win might have been, Harvard Head Coach Tommy Amaker is grateful for his third straight victory after losing the Ivy opener to Dartmouth two weeks ago.

“Just a tremendous, gutsy effort by our entire team,” Amaker said. “We talked about — coming after the sensational win we had against Princeton — how tough sometimes things can be to turn back around in a short window and find that spirit and fight. I thought our kids brought it.”

The first half began as many have for the Crimson this season, with back-and-forth play by both teams that kept the score close and saw both teams very evenly matched.

Both Harvard and Penn saw small margins in the first minutes of the game, with the Quakers leading by six with 15:11 to go and the Crimson leading by eight with 8:42 remaining in the half, though neither team was able to build a steady lead as players would frequently quickly switch from being fiery hot to ice cold.

As soon as one team would build a small lead, the other would make a couple of quick baskets to swing the game back in its direction, and with just two minutes left in the first half, the score was tied at 26.

In the last 90 seconds, however, field goals from sophomores Tey Barbour and Robert Hinton gave Harvard a 31-26 advantage heading into the break.

Barbour held that momentum early in the second half, making a three-pointer and a couple of free throws early, and two minutes into the period, the Crimson held a 36-28 lead.

Predictably, though, Penn then went on an 8-0 run to tie the score just four minutes later.

The teams continued to trade blows as the second half went on, and the next 12 minutes of game time saw the score stay within three points as neither team was able to keep the other quiet.

As the game clock neared two minutes, Harvard finally started to see the light at the end of the tunnel when freshman forward Ryan Sullivan — who ended the night with six points on three-for-three shooting off the bench — dunked the ball to give his team a four-point lead.

The Quakers came right back across the floor to make a quick three-pointer, but layups by Hinton and captain Chandler Piggé gave the Crimson a five-point lead with less than a minute to play.

Late-game strategy from Penn brought the lead down to just one point, but before the Quakers were able to get off a shot attempt after a Harvard missed a free throw, the time ran out. As the buzzer blared to signal the end of regulation, the Crimson had secured its narrowest win since beating Penn 79-78 in overtime last February.

The close win came just two days after the team went to overtime against Princeton, and again, the team’s late-game chemistry helped to secure a conference win for Amaker’s squad.

“Our coaches, they prepared us for these moments,” Hinton said after the game. “When it gets really grimy and gritty at the end of games, I turn and see my brothers. We have so much confidence in end-of-game scenarios and in every game because of that confidence in each other."

Barbour, along with junior forward Thomas Batties II, led Harvard in scoring with 17 points, while Hinton added 11 of his own despite shooting his worst field goal percentage (38.5 percent) since November. It was his fourth straight — and 11th of 12 — game in double-digit scoring as he pushed his team-high scoring average to 16.3 points per game.

The Crimson ends a three-game homestand on Saturday when it plays Cornell — where Hinton’s brother Adam is a senior — at Lavietes Pavilion.

—Staff writer Connor Castañeda can be reached at [email protected].