Crimson Continues Tailspin

The Harvard men’s basketball team was powerless to pull out of its freefall on Friday night, losing to Brown 79-66 at Lavietes Pavilion.

The Crimson has now dropped four straight league games, including three in a row at home, to fall to 12-10 overall and 4-5 in the Ivies.

“We played in a funk,” captain Matt Stehle said. “It was like we had all just woken up from a long sleep.”

Just as in last week’s losses to Princeton and Penn, the Crimson struggled in the opening minutes, getting off to a sluggish start that had the team playing from well behind the entire night. In stark contrast to last month’s 75-58 win in Providence, in which Harvard outscored Brown 45-23 in the first half, Harvard looked listless and uncertain against a revitalized Bears squad that out-hustled Harvard around the court, jumping out to a 10-3 lead four minutes into the game.

“Everybody’s aware of it, and we’ve talked about it a lot…it’s hard to put a finger on it, in terms of how to start the game,” coach Frank Sullivan said. “Tonight Brown took us by surprise, because the game was all zone [defense] when we played them last time. We thought we would see zone, [but] we saw an aggressive man-to-man.”

The Crimson came back to cut the lead to 17-14, but a quick 9-1 run by Brown (8-14, 4-5) established the double-digit lead that the Bears would enjoy for most of the game’s remainder. Continually getting to the basket with strong drives and crisp backdoor cuts, Brown outplayed Harvard at its own game, scoring 20 points in the paint in the first half to take a 37-24 lead into the break.

Captain Matt Stehle tallied Harvard’s first six points of the second half to cut the lead down to nine, but Brown answered the challenge in assertive fashion, again penetrating the Crimson defenses to score on four straight point blanc baskets that built the lead up to 16.

“Brown was able to get too close to the rim all night long,” Sullivan said. “The rim [was] too wide open.”

“We just got back-cut a whole lot…it looked like Princeton running a clinic,” Stehle added.

After freshman point guard Drew Housman’s three-pointer made it 48-35, a clearly frustrated Stehle drew a technical foul, leading to two free throws from Brown point guard Damon Huffman. Forward Chris Skrelja buried a pullup jumper and added a three-pointer on the ensuing possession to widen the lead to 20 with 13 minutes left. Six minutes later, Skrelja drove baseline to give the Bears their biggest lead of the game at 69-45.

The Crimson finally turned it on down the stretch, but their desperate run was launched too late to take effect. Senior center Brian Cusworth’s layup with 3:26 to play made it a twelve-point game. Brown did not make a field goal the rest of the way, but a 7-of-10 performance from the free-throw line ensured the completion of the upset.

Skrelja, a first year small forward with a high of five points entering the game, had racked up 12 points by halftime. He finished with 19 on 8-of-11 shooting to go along with 10 rebounds, also a career best. Swingman Keenan Jeppesen added 17 points, while Huffman contributed 13.

Junior shooting guard Jim Goffredo, who scored 30 points against Brown in the two teams’ last matchup, led the Crimson with 18. Stehle had 16 on 6-of-15 shooting, while Cusworth recorded a double-double with 13 points and 11 rebounds.

The four game losing streak is the longest for the Crimson on the season, and the most Harvard has lost in a row since the team dropped four straight to end its 4-23 2003-04 campaign and two more to begin last year.

The Crimson will look to staunch the bleeding Saturday night against Yale, which handed Harvard its first loss of the league season last month in New Haven. Game time at Lavietes Pavilion is set for 7 p.m.