M. Basketball Dominates Yale, Moves Into Tie For Second in Ivies

An emotional Harvard team delivered its best performance of the year Friday night at Lavietes Pavilion, beating Yale 82-66 to pull into a three-way tie for second place in the Ivy League.

The Crimson’s win was the largest margin for an Ivy League contest since 2003 and biggest over Yale (9-14, 5-5 Ivy) in five years. Harvard (11-13, 6-5) was clearly ready to play against the team that beat the Crimson by one point in New Haven two weeks earlier.

“We go into every game with [Yale] with a passion to bring them down,” junior center Brian Cusworth said. “[This is] a very gratifying win for us.”

Harvard jumped out to an early 21-11 lead and never trailed throughout the entire game. Leading by 32-26 at intermission, the Crimson went on a 7-0 run to open the second half, capped by a driving dunk by Cusworth.

“It’s just a different type of game when we start going to the basket harder,” Cusworth said. “Fortunately, they weren’t able to stop us.”

Harvard extended its lead to 16 on seven consecutive points from Cusworth to take a 52-36 lead with 10:26 left. Yale cut the deficit down to ten with 8:42 to play, but Harvard put the game out of reach by outscoring the Bulldogs 10-3 to take a 17-point lead, its largest of the game, with 4:23 remaining. Yale would not come closer than nine the rest of the way.

“Our weakside defense was very poor,” Yale coach James Jones said. “We never rotated over when we needed to rotate over, and we gave them easy shots at the basket.”

Cusworth led all players with 21 points, tying a career high, and 11 rebounds. He also had three thunderous dunks that got the team going in the second half, and limited Yale center Dominick Martin to just two points in 23 minutes.

“[Cusworth] had an excellent game, probably his best game of the season,” junior forward Matt Stehle said. “He was just dominating, and they had no answer for him whatsoever.”

Stehle added 15 points, nine rebounds and four assists for the Crimson, and senior guard Kevin Rogus shot 4-of-5 from downtown for 13 points. Rogus also contributed four assists, while senior point guard David Giovacchini led Harvard with seven, his highest total of the Ivy season. The Crimson was able to find open players all night, shooting 49 percent from the floor and handing out 23 assists to only 11 turnovers.

“I’m reluctant to talk about [the assist to turnover ratio] because I don’t want to jinx the whole thing,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. “It’s clearly one of our best games.”

Harvard appeared to draw energy from the contentious Bulldogs fans in attendance. Yale brought its cheerleaders and a raucous band to Lavietes in the attempt to turn Cambridge into New Haven-north.

“It kind of pisses us off that they’re trying to come down here and pretend like this is their home gym,” Cusworth said. “There’s no way that we were going to let them take over the atmosphere of the gym...we let our play prove that point.”

Yale was led by forward Caleb Holmes and guards Casey Hughes and Edwin Draughan, who all had 14 points. Hughes added 11 rebounds for the Bulldogs.

Harvard’s win moves it above the .500 mark in the Ivy League and into a tie with Dartmouth and Cornell behind league-leading Penn. The victory also gives the Crimson its fourth chance of the year to sweep a weekend series—something it has not done since 2002—Saturday night against Brown.

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