Crimson To Face Surging Big Green

A month ago, a glance at the records would have appeared to show the Harvard men’s basketball team’s Ivy League opener at Dartmouth to be a major mismatch.

A month can make a big difference.

With the Crimson’s 87-79 win at Long Island on December 10, it improved to 6-3 on the season. By contrast, at that time, the Big Green had lost its first six games of the season.

Since then, Harvard has had some good games, but closed the non-conference season with three straight losses. It was blown out at home by Sacred Heart 95-75, fell to Big East school Providence 101-92, and in its most recent outing, suffered its worst loss of the season, falling 81-48 to UC Irvine. It ended the non-conference season 7-7.

“We are pleased to be 7-7 in the non-league schedule,” said Crimson head coach Frank Sullivan. “The schedule was skewed more towards the road games, so we are happy to have the record that we have. I’m disappointed, though, that we didn’t play well in the get-away game that was Sacred Heart, and the recovery game which was Irvine. When we look at those three games as a group, it was more speed and quickness than we saw all season on a collective basis.”

Those three teams were able to exploit Harvard’s weaknesses on the defensive end.

“We just weren’t happy with our defense in any of those games,” Sullivan said. “Our defense in league play is something we have to work on significantly. We have got to get our defense up to speed.”

Dartmouth, on the other hand, has been on an upward swing since its 0-6 start, winning five of six since then as many of its key players returned to health.

The key recovery for the Big Green has been that of senior guard Leon Pattman. In the six games after his return, Pattman has averaged 17 points per game.

“They have one of the best players in the league in Leon Pattman,” Sullivan said. “He was Rookie of the Year when he first came in. People thought that he would dominate this league by the time he was a senior. Well, now he is a senior. The first consideration is how talented he is. Top one, two, three players in the league? Yes, absolutely. We have to find some answers for him defensively.”

Dartmouth has many more weapons than Pattman. Sophomore guard DeVon Mosely is averaging 10.2 points per game and sophomore forward Alex Barnett, the only player to start all 12 games this season, averages 9.2 points per game and leads the Big Green with 5.3 rebounds per game.

“They have a lot of guys who are contributing to the scoring,” said senior center Brian Cusworth. “They have a lot of guys who are averaging in the six-to-ten point range who have a chance to go off. At the four and the five spot, they have a lot of players with a lot of speed, a lot of quickness.”

In last year’s Ivy opener, captain Jim Goffredo exploded for a career-high 33 points with 7-of-12 three-point shooting in a 78-65 home win over the Big Green.

In its second game against Dartmouth last season, Harvard pulled out a 65-53 road win in Hanover against a Dartmouth team that was 2-11 at the time.

“It always seems like we have close games up there,” Goffredo said. “It’s always hard for us to play up there, for one reason or another.”

Unlike last year, the Big Green will come into the game on a hot streak.

“They are on that little roll that we felt when we won six out of seven,” Sullivan said. “They have now won five out of six. We know how they feel. I think we are going to see two very hungry teams to win this first game.”

—Staff writer Ted Kirby can be reached at tjkirby@fas.harvard.edu.