Harvard Tries to Make History

Even in a season of ups and downs, there remains, as always, one constant in Harvard men’s basketball: history will inevitably repeat itself.

Senior center Brian Cusworth plowed through the Ivies, averaging a league-best 18.7 points per game before leaving at semester’s end.

Yet, once again, Harvard underachieved and stagnated in the middle, going 2-2 in the Ivies to go with a 10-10 overall record.

Sophomore point guard Drew Housman has posted career performances this year while also emerging as one of the best in the Ancient Eight. None is as striking as his performance two weeks ago in Jadwin Gym against the Tigers.

His 33 points, which included 18 of the Crimson’s 20 in the second half and overtime, should have put Harvard over the top, snapping its 17-year losing streak at Princeton.

But as is the Crimson’s plight over the team’s recent past, history reared its ugly head and doomed the Harvard squad, as a 74-69 double-overtime victory mirrored a loss in Jadwin just three years prior.

Yet, as captain Jim Goffredo, along with fellow senior Brian Darcy, enter their final games this weekend in Lavietes Pavilion, they will look to lead the team against this intangible force—breaking with tradition to get just one win against the Big P’s: Penn and Princeton.

“It’s bittersweet; I have a lot of good memories associated with basketball and Harvard,” Darcy said. “At the same time, I’m ready to play and want to definitely make an impression in my last two games here.”

The first of these efforts will be the most daunting. The Crimson faces a Penn team looking to maintain its lead in the Ivies over second-place Yale. Leading the way for the Quakers will be senior Ibrahim Jaaber, who fought neck-and-neck with Housman in the Palestra two weeks ago, and classmate Mark Zoller, who is the league’s leading scorer and rebounder with the absence of Cusworth.

“Our goal is to get the series split,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said, “Penn has arguably two of the leading Ivy Player of the Year [contenders]; the pride of our team is based on continuing what we did well against them. If that means playing spoiler, that’s it.”

What the Crimson did well in the last meeting rested in Housman’s effort against Jaaber and the team’s tenacity to stay close. That is, until a 10-0 Quaker run with eight minutes to play ended the squad’s shot at a victory in Pennsylvania, Pa. for the first time since 1991.

What Harvard did poorly against the Quakers was accentuated last weekend—the Crimson could not guard the low post.

Zoller notched a game-high 17 points, and with the aid of fellow senior big man Steve Danley’s double-digit scoring effort, Penn was able to shoot 10-19 from the floor and 15-18 from the free-throw line in the second half—signs of a tired Harvard squad but also one getting dominated in the front court.

“With both games it’s important,” Darcy said. “Especially at Penn, they have some prominent big men in Zoller and Danley that we have to play.”

And coming off of last weekend’s defensive deficiencies, punctuated by the Bulldogs posting an astonishing 62.7 field goal percentage against the squad, the Crimson still has a long way to go.

“Two of our poorer defensive games overall were last weekend,” Sullivan said. “It speaks toward our inconsistencies—we had great rebounding games, but we had problems in the low post area of the court.”

And on Saturday, Harvard will have to step up to the defensive task—and all the while live down those demons of recent past.

In addition to the double-overtime heartbreak two weeks ago, the Crimson faces Princeton for the first time at Lavietes since the Tiger’s stunning comeback win just last year.

The 7-0 run by the Tigers over the final 1:17, capped by a Noah Savage baseline jumper with 0.2 seconds to play, transformed a 59-53 Harvard lead into a crushing 60-59 loss.

One would think that this was just blind luck, but for the Crimson faithful, it is nothing more than a little bit of history repeating—as a result of the two recent heartbreaks against the Tigers, Harvard has one, just one victory over Princeton in the past nine years, occurring in 2005 at Lavietes.

To make this history obsolete, however, the Crimson will need to get its captain, playing his last weekend at home, back on track.

Since the departure of Cusworth, Goffredo has been streaky at best, as showcased in the contrast between a seven-point effort in Jadwin and a 20-point offensive explosion last week against Brown.

To take out both teams, and avoid reliving history, the senior will need to be at his best. But being consistant may be a far simpler task than one would think.

“[We] talked about one thing—relaxing,” Sullivan said. “He’s trying to compensate with the loss of [Cusworth]—I told him you’re a 1,000 point scorer, you’re an Academic All-American, and you’re captain of Harvard Basketball, relax and play.”

—Staff Writer Walter E. Howell can be reached at wehowell@fas.harvard.edu.