Harvard Tops Black Bears

The Harvard men’s basketball team took a decisive first step towards proving its preseason No. 7 Ivy League ranking was a mistake on Saturday afternoon at Lavietes Pavilion, beating Maine, 75-71, in the opening game of the 2006-07 season for both squads.

Harvard received significant contributions on offense from its three returning starters, with senior center Brian Cusworth (20 points) leading all scorers. The Crimson snapped a two-game losing streak to the Black Bears, who were picked as the America East Conference’s second-best team in the preseason poll.

“Any win to start the season is always a terrific one,” coach Frank Sullivan said. “We were making plays in the second half at critical periods of time. We didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot at all when the pressure got on.”

The Crimson showed a good deal of mettle in a back-and-forth, tightly-contested second half that featured seven ties and eight lead changes. Harvard took a decisive 66-65 advantage with 3:21 remaining on sophomore point guard Drew Housman’s drive down the right side of the lane and high bank off the glass.

After each team missed shots, sophomore forward Evan Harris gave the Crimson breathing room with a pretty move off the dribble from the top of the key. Harris finished with a layup and completed the three-point play from the line, putting Harvard up by four.

Maine kept it close, however, and an offensive rebound by forward Phillipe Tchekane-Bofia led to a put-back that cut the lead to 73-71 with nine seconds to play. The Crimson calmly got the ball into the hands of Housman, who buried a pair from the line to put the game on ice.

Harvard was in position to close it out in the final minutes thanks to a crucial shift in momentum earlier in the second half. Maine, trailing by three at halftime, deleted the deficit by running off a 15-5 run to start the period, a sequence capped by a spectacular put-back dunk by guard Chris Bruff over Cusworth which gave the Black Bears their largest lead at 44-37.

Cusworth immediately responded. The 7’0 center took over down low, battling for advantageous position and demanding the ball from the guards. He began with a pair of free-throws and added three consecutive lay-ups, the last coming on a three-point play. Overall Cusworth scored nine straight points for Harvard, bringing the Crimson back within one at 47-46 and killing the quicker Maine squad’s chance to run away with the game.

“We wanted to set a tone for the rest of the season that nobody’s going to come into our home gym and control the tempo of the game,” Cusworth said. “We really wanted to establish homecourt dominance.”

“We have to reestablish a level of play right now from the beginning of the year on the homecourt, which is what we did in the non-league [schedule] last year but didn’t do in the Ivy League,” Sullivan added.

The Crimson had all segments of its offensive attack working against an athletically superior Maine team. In addition to Cusworth’s 20 points on 5-of-7 shooting, the other members of Harvard’s big three performed well. Noted marksman and senior captain Jim Goffredo hit five of his ten three-point attempts to finish with 19 points and Housman used his dribble-penetration to score 15 points on 4-of-8 shooting from the floor and 6-of-7 from the line.

Harvard also got key contributions from a pair of unheralded players. Freshman Jeremy Lin saw significant minutes at guard in his first collegiate game, chipping in four steals and a huge driving layup that put Harvard up by one late. Reserve forward Brad Unger, a junior, finished with 10 points by hitting four of his five shots, none bigger than a layup with 31 seconds left that gave Harvard a five-point cushion.

The Crimson, which was out-rebounded 42-29, won the game at the free-throw line. Harvard was 28-of-37 from the stripe versus Maine’s 10-15 performance, a continuation of a trend from last year, when Harvard shot over 150 more free throws than its opponents and capitalized at an Ivy second-best .745 percentage.

The combination of Cusworth and Harris’s work down low and the drives of Housman and Goffredo forced Maine’s big men into critical foul trouble. Tchekane-Bofia was an unstoppable force on the glass, collecting seven offensive rebounds and 17 points, nearly all coming on second-chance put-backs. But the 6’6, 230 lb. forward from Cameroon was limited to just 16 minutes of play, including only six in the second half after picking up his third and fourth foul within the span of one minute early in the period. Additionally, center Olli Ahvenniemi fouled out late in the contest and played just 20 minutes overall, limiting Maine’s ability to stop Cusworth down low.

The Black Bears were paced by freshman Junior Bernal, who scored 18 points on 6-of-9 shooting in his collegiate debut. Three-point threat Kevin Reed, a senior guard who scored 14 second-half points to help Maine beat Harvard in the last game the teams played in 2004, was held to 12 points on 5-of-15 shooting.

The Crimson will look to knock off another America East team tomorrow when it faces Boston University at Lavietes Pavilion. Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m.

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