Penn, Princeton Beckon Harvard

The finish that seemed impossible earlier in the season now has come within reach. The Ivies’ most ferocious gauntlet, however, still awaits the Harvard men’s basketball team in its quest to capture a winning league season for the first time in eight years.

Since a 2-3 start, the Crimson (12-13, 7-5 Ivy) has won five of its last seven games, including an impressive sweep of Yale and Brown at home last weekend. Harvard now heads to Princeton (13-12, 4-7) tonight and Pennsylvania (17-8, 10-1) tomorrow for its last two games of the season.

A win against either team would give the Crimson eight league wins and seal its first over-.500 Ivy campaign since 1997. Victories against both would grant Harvard a winning overall record, ensure the team finishes in second place a year after it came in seventh, and generate a great deal of momentum heading into the off-season.

“[The players] have made so much progress in one year,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. “Anything that gets us over .500 would just [provide] wonderful closure for the group of seniors that we’ve had, and springboard us into next year.”

There is a reason that Harvard has not been able to sweep the Princeton-Penn road trip since 1985. This year will be no less challenging than those in the past; despite the fact that the Ivy title has already been locked up by Penn, both proud programs will be ready to defend their home courts and their pride against the Crimson.

“This would be absolutely huge. We know we can do it,” junior center Brian Cusworth said. “Winning this and pulling off a feat that hasn’t been done in 20 years would just be such a great way to finish this comeback year on a high note.”

Harvard will look for its first sweep of Princeton since 1984 in Jadwin Gym, in a game that will be televised on the YES Network. The Crimson can gain confidence from its 61-57 home win over the Tigers on February 5th, which broke a streak of 10 straight defeats against Princeton. That humiliating defeat, combined with one of the worst seasons in school history, will surely have the wounded Tigers in a nasty mood.

One Princeton player who figures to be fired up is center Judson Wallace. Wallace has been severely limited by a chronic back injury all season, but against Harvard the 6’10” senior scored 23 points on 9-of-15 shooting, nearly pulling out a win by himself.

“Princeton looks at it by position...where they can score at what spot,” Sullivan said. “They’ll realize that they had great success at the five spot against us, and they’ll play off that.”

The Crimson should prepare for the version of Wallace that burned the team in Cambridge—and not the one who played just 14 minutes in last weekend’s loss to Cornell.

“No matter how Wallace is feeling, they’re going to probably have him go at us real hard,” Cusworth said. “These are his last games at home, in front of his crowd...I’m sure the adrenaline will get him through the back injury.”

Though Cusworth and the rest of the Harvard frontcourt face difficult challenges tonight, it will be up to the Crimson’s guards to slow down Penn at the Palestra on tomorrow.

The Quakers have been carried by their starting backcourt. Senior point guard Tim Begley averages 14.1 points and a league-leading 4.9 assists per game, and sophomore shooting guard Ibrahim Jaaber is second on the Quakers in scoring with 11.8 ppg while leading the circuit in steals (2.84 per game).

“You can’t give them an inch, because it ends up turning into a lot more than that,” said senior point guard David Giovacchini. “The biggest thing is if we can keep the ball out of Begley’s hands, make him a passer. We want to make their big guys beat us instead of having those two guys with the majority of points and plays.”

It will be extremely difficult to keep Penn’s prolific tandem off the scoreboard. In the last meeting with Harvard—which the Quakers won 70-57—the duo combined for 33 points, 12 rebounds and six assists.

“That certainly has been a challenge for us every year against Penn—containing their guards,” Sullivan said.

The overall challenge for the Crimson will be to trump its recent history at Princeton and Penn. Last year was emblematic of Harvard’s fortunes—the team suffered an embarrassing 35-point loss to Penn at the Palestra, then traveled to Jadwin and fell in double overtime to the eventual league champions.

“[Winning] would be a great moment for all the guys that have been associated with this program,” Giovacchini said. “[And] it will be a confidence boost, saying we can actually win at these places, they’re not invincible at home.”

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