Men's Basketball Looks to Stay Undefeated At Home Against UMass

Four games in, the Harvard men’s basketball team (3-1) has performed roughly as its ranking would have suggested. Apart from a one-point loss to Holy Cross, Harvard has blown away each of its other opponents with suffocating defense and timely offense. The Crimson will look to run its record to 4-0 at home when UMass comes to town Saturday afternoon at Lavietes Pavilion (2:00 p.m., ESPN3). Below, The Back Page takes a look at the three main things to keep your eye on as Harvard goes for its first marquee nonconference win of the season.

Saunders’ Theatre: Senior wing Wesley Saunders has been, in a word, sublime. He is averaging 20.5 points and 9.0 rebounds a game, leading the team in both categories. He is also first in both minutes played and assists/turnover ratio, getting to the line nearly seven times a game—and making 86 percent of those attempts. Albeit in a small sample size, he looks to be once again the best player in the conference

Saturday, he will be matched up with Minutemen wing Derrick Gordon. Gordon made national news last April when he became the first openly gay player in Division I men’s college basketball, news that overshadowed the significant step forward he took on the court in his sophomore season. His junior year, Gordon has become a dynamic weapon. He averages 13.8 points and 5.5 rebounds a game, slashing into the paint and drawing foul after foul.

Although the Lalanne-Steve Moundou-Missi matchup inside will be a big one for the Crimson, whether Saunders can win—or even dominate—this matchup will likely determine the game.

Home Sweet Home: Harvard’s win against Houston ran its home record to 14-1 since the end of the 2012 season, and the team has not lost at home so far this year. The record doesn’t come without an asterisk—as Harvard’s prestige has grown, fewer and fewer teams have been willing to come to Cambridge to play the Crimson. Before the season, coach Tommy Amaker talked about the difficulty of engaging high-major opponents in “home-and-home” contracts; as Harvard has improved, a game once seen as a gimme has become far less desirable for opponents.

In recent years, however, the Crimson has been able to draw regional foes into matchups at home. After beating Boston College five straight times on the road, the Eagles agreed to come to Harvard last January for the first time in 23 years. UMass will be similarly making its first trip to Cambridge in 33 years.

Consistency v. Change: The last two times these teams met, a 77-74 UMass win, the Minutemen looked radically different. Cady Lalanne, the team’s leading scorer this year, is the only starter from that game still on the team. Star guard Chaz Williams, who had 12 points and 10 assists, is now playing in Turkey; Raphiael Putney is in the D-League.

Harvard, however, has been a model of consistency. Four of the starters from two years ago—Saunders, Moundou-Missi, junior co-captain Siyani Chambers, and senior forward Kenyatta Smith—will likely start again Saturday. Of the eight-man rotation that Harvard coach Tommy Amaker used two years ago, six still figure prominently into the Crimson rotation—the only exceptions being the graduated Laurent Rivard ’14 and Christian Webster ’13.

The Crimson’s big three—Chambers, Moundou-Missi, and Saunders—have barely missed a game in the last two-plus years. They are averaging a combined 98.0 minutes a game this season and, against UMass, will be emblematic of the Crimson’s internal consistency.

—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at david.freed@thecrimson.com.