M. Basketball Splits Season Series With Lions

The killer instinct surfaced exactly when needed Friday night.

The Harvard men’s basketball team won going away at Lavietes Pavilion, beating Columbia 78-71 to hand the Lions (12-10, 3-6 Ivy) their fifth straight loss. For the third consecutive game, the Crimson (10-12, 5-4) outplayed its opponent down the stretch after struggling in the first half.

“It was important for us to split the series with Columbia,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. “We felt very disappointed when we got beat down [in New York].”

Columbia scored the first basket out of intermission to extend its lead to 35-30, but Harvard then struck back to take control of the game. Junior center Brian Cusworth scored eight quick points, spurring a 21-8 run that gave Harvard an eight-point lead. The Lions cut it to four, but another 10-2 Harvard spurt, capped by a three from senior guard Kevin Rogus, pushed the lead to 61-49.

Columbia hung around thanks to the efforts of guard Colin Davis, who scored six straight points for the Lions, including a tip-in with 3:26 left that trimmed the lead to 65-60. Harvard did not make a field goal for the remainder of the contest, but was able to dispatch Columbia by hitting 13-of-16 free throws in the game’s final three minutes. Junior forward Matt Stehle, who tallied 16 points and a game high 12 rebounds, and junior guard Michael Beal, who came off the bench for nine points, six boards and four assists, each hit 5-of-6 from the line to seal the win.

“The bench really helped us big time tonight,” Sullivan said. “In a game that was getting kind of ugly, [Beal and sophomore guard Jim Goffredo] came in and gave us some real nice lifts.”

On a night when senior guard Kevin Rogus struggled to find the range from beyond the arc and shot just 3-of-10 from the field, the Crimson was picked up by Goffredo’s effort. Harvard’s sixth man scored 14 points, tying a season high, on 4-of-6 shooting from downtown. Goffredo hit three treys in the initial frame, preventing the Crimson from going into halftime with a much larger deficit to overcome.

“I just was feeling it in the first half,” sophomore guard Jim Goffredo said. “I made my first couple, and that’s a big confidence booster...my shot was feeling good tonight.”

Harvard struggled in the first half to break the man-to-man full-court press that the young, quick Columbia team employed, committing 10 turnovers and shooting just 38 percent from the floor. The Lions were able to generate offense from their defense, hitting 5-of-9 threes to take a 33-30 lead into the locker room.

“We talked about the five three pointers, [which were] the difference for them in the scoring,” Sullivan said, “[and the fact that] we didn’t handle the press very well at all.”

Harvard was able to beat Columbia’s pressure defense much more effectively in the second half, collecting six fast break points after getting none before the break. The Crimson’s last two baskets of the game were dunks in transition—a one-handed stuff by Cusworth, and a reverse jam from captain Jason Norman that put Harvard up 65-58 with 3:45 to play.

“The focus was just to keep [the ball] in the middle of the court, because a man press like that focuses on pushing guys to the sideline,” Cusworth said. “I thought we did a great job of finding the open man in that situation.”

Cusworth lead the Crimson with a game high 18 points on 8-of-11 from the floor, his highest output of the Ivy season thus far. In the Crimson’s earlier loss at Columbia, Harvard’s center was held to only five points by the active post defense of the Lions’ smaller frontcourt players. Cusworth was able to break free in the second half of Friday’s game, however, shooting a perfect 4-of-4 from the field and 2-of-2 from the line.

“In the second half, Brian felt a little more comfortable,” Sullivan said. “At the end of the day he came up with good numbers and felt better about himself.”

The Lions were paced by point guard Brent Loscalzo, who scored 13. Columbia’s leading scorer, forward Matt Preston, was largely held in check by the defensive tandem of Stehle and Norman, and finished with 12 points on 3-of-10 shooting.

“That was a really big matchup,” Cusworth said. “In the first game, [Preston] was a tough guard for us...Matt and Jason did a great job in bottling him up.”

The win marked the latest that Harvard has been above .500 in league play since the 2001-02 season, and moved the Crimson into a tie with Cornell in the Ivy standings heading into the two teams’ Saturday night matchup.

—Staff writer Caleb W. Peiffer can be reached at cpeiffer@fas.harvard.edu.