NOTEBOOK: Second-half Surge Dooms Men's Basketball on Road

After 20 minutes of dominant basketball, the Harvard men’s basketball team had out-dribbled, out-shot, and out-played Colorado on the Buffaloes’ own turf.

The Crimson shredded a weak perimeter defense to dominate from behind the arc, shooting 50 percent from deep. Harvard forced nine turnovers and finished the half with a convincing 12-point lead after jumping out to a 16-4 lead in the first four minutes.

But the fire had been lit.

The Buffaloes stormed back in the second half, opening on a 9-2 run to pull within five, and it became just a matter of time as the Harvard defense began a slow collapse. Colorado outshot the Crimson 13-8 in the second stanza and came away with a 70-62 victory at Coors Events Center on Sunday night.

“They just came out with a little more energy than us in the second half,” junior wing Wesley Saunders said. “Fatigue comes into play, but we’ve got to fight through that. We just have to give them credit; they won the game.”

Harvard finished the game with a season-low 29 rebounds to the Buffaloes’ 46 and shot 23 percent from the field in the second half. A three pointer from co-captain Laurent Rivard pulled the Crimson within four points with 30 seconds to play, but Colorado was perfect from the charity stripe with Harvard forced to foul to get back into the game.

“I thought we missed some and got frustrated,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said. “I thought we were trying to do things that ordinarily we shouldn’t be trying to do, to make up for it. Our shot selection wasn’t the best that it needed to be, given that we missed some wide-open shots.”

DIN-WINNING

After a nearly three minute scoreless stretch in the second half, Buffaloes guard Spencer Dinwiddie gave the Crimson a taste of what might have been.

The junior guard—who turned down Harvard for Colorado in the recruiting process—hit a jumper with less than six minutes on the clock to bring the Buffaloes within two and spark the decisive rally. Freshman forward Zena Edosomwan was stuffed on the other end, and two quick threes in transition set up Dinwiddie again.

His shot—the third from beyond the arc in three straight possessions for Colorado—was nothing but net. In less than a minute, Harvard had gone from up four to down seven.

“They certainly made some shots that they didn’t make in the first half,” Amaker said. “Dinwiddie’s an outstanding player. Their guards penetrated and made plays off the bounce [in the second half].”

Dinwiddie finished the night with a team-high 17 points—including 10 in the second half—on 4-7 shooting from deep.

CROWDED OUT

As Colorado rallied in the second half, so did a raucous home crowd.

Playing on the road for the first time this season, the Crimson faced its first true test. Harvard opened its season with four decisive victories at home. But in the first of six consecutive road games—including three at the Carrs/Safeway Great Alaska Shootout next week—Harvard faltered.

Harvard’s energy level fell in the second half as Colorado adapted and began to penetrate its defense. A win in the Buffaloes home arena would have been a statement for the Crimson, whose national attention suffers due to a perennially weak schedule playing in the Ivy League. With only two more true non-conference tests—Vermont and Connecticut—Harvard missed an opportunity to make its presence felt on the national stage.

Though a lack of fan support did not prevent the Crimson from jumping out to an early lead, Harvard could not find its offensive rhythm in the second half, and fell at the hands of a newly cohesive Buffaloes offense. Colorado and its fan base both found their second wind down the stretch, and the reenergized Buffaloes proved unstoppable.

“That was a big turning point, when the crowd got back into the game,” Saunders said. “In the first half, we were kind of able to stop their run, but we got some work to do.”

—Staff writer Hope Schwartz can be reached at hschwartz@live.com.