Barbour’s Career-High Lifts Crimson Over Woeful Bears

Three starters scored 16 or more points, the team shot 93 percent from the free-throw line, and the Harvard men’s basketball team ran away with a 69-59 win over the Brown Bears in the first game of its three-game road trip.

One of the Crimson’s starters, sophomore guard Tey Barbour, had yet another stellar performance, scoring a career-high 20 points on 71 percent shooting a week after tying his previous career-high in a tough loss to Cornell last Saturday.

The win puts the Crimson (11-9, 4-2 Ivy) in second place in the Ivy League, setting up a Saturday night showdown with the leader of the league, Yale, in a game that will see the winner top the conference. The Bears (7-12, 1-5), however, fell to last place in the Ancient Eight with their third straight loss.

The first half of play was similar to many of Harvard’s this season, with the first nine minutes being neck-and-neck as neither team managed to lead by more than one possession.

Both squads shot under 45 percent from the field in the period, and it took until there were just under five minutes on the game clock before the Crimson emerged with a small—but comfortable—five-point lead.

Leading by five with just over four minutes left in the half, it was four free throws down the stretch from sophomore guard Robert Hinton that helped close out a strong stretch for Harvard. The Crimson, the visiting team, managed to go into the break with a six-point lead, its biggest of the night to that point.

In the half, Harvard shot 14-for-15 (93 percent) from the charity stripe, much improved from the 79 percent free-throw shooting that the team has recorded in the season thus far.

The second half opened well for the Crimson, as Barbour, alongside sophomore guard Ben Eisendrath, went on an 8-0 run as a pair to answer a quick three-pointer from Brown and push Harvard’s lead to double-digits.

The Crimson maintained a comfortable advantage throughout much of the half, though Brown’s forward Landon Lewis kept his team in the game with his career-high 30 points, including 19 in the second half.

The Bears managed to close the gap to just six points with just over two minutes left to play in the game, but 10 made free throws in the last 2:01 of the second half ensured that Harvard would leave Providence, R.I., with a win.

In addition to Barbour’s 20-piece performance, Hinton added 22, and captain Chandler Piggé tallied 16 of his own as the Crimson’s starters continued to shine for head coach Tommy Amaker’s team.

Harvard’s bench, on the other hand, played its third straight game without sixth-man sophomore Austin Hunt, managing to score just two points on the night, with the only bucket coming from freshman guard Frankie Mannino’s layup in the second half.

Next up, the Crimson will travel down I-95 as it prepares to face its rivals, the Ivy-leading Yale Bulldogs, in New Haven, C.T. on Saturday night.

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