Back Home, Men's Basketball Prepares for Huskies

After traveling over 4,500 miles to play its last game, the Harvard men’s basketball team’s (7-1) Wednesday tilt against Northeastern (2-5) will provide a change of pace. Instead of connecting on different airlines, the team simply has to transfer T lines as it renews its cross-town rivalry with the Huskies.

Harvard comes into the game on a three-game winning streak after winning the Great Alaska Shootout. Led by juniors Wesley Saunders (14.3 ppg, 4.7 apg) and Steve Moundou-Missi (12.7 ppg, 8.3 rpg), the team won each of its tournament games by an average of nearly 14 points. Saunders was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.

“I think we are learning to piece together all the pieces on our team,” senior Laurent Rivard said. “We have learned to play together really well and we are extremely unselfish. We want to win the Ivy League and make a run in the tournament and to do that you have to be unselfish. It cannot be about the points, but [rather] about the team.”

The Huskies come into the game on a season-long three-game slide, with two of the losses to teams hovering just outside of the Associated Press Top 25. Both of the losses, to Florida State (62-60) and VCU (79-66), came away from home, where the Huskies are 1-4 on the year. Overall, Wednesday’s game will only be the Huskies’ third at home all season.

Northeastern is led by junior forward Scott Eatherton, who has five double-doubles on the season and averages just over 16 points and 10 rebounds a game. Against Florida State, Eatherton nearly single-handedly willed the team to victory with 21 points, 15 rebounds, and two blocks.

However, while Eatherton anchors the interior of a defense that has held opponents to just 44 percent shooting from the floor, Northeastern’s matches up poorly to Harvard’s offensive strengths.

The Huskies allow opponents to shoot 36 percent from behind the arc and give up 14 free throws a game. On the year, the Crimson has shot nearly 77 percent from the line. Although the team has struggled so far from three, it returns the core of a team that shot nearly 40 percent from distance last season.

There are recent signs that Harvard and, in particular, its most prolific shooter, are getting back on track. Over the weekend, Rivard—a career 40-percent shooter—knocked down five triples in back-to-back games, becoming Harvard’s all-time leader in made three-point shots.

Rivard, who attempted only one shot against Denver, said that Harvard adjusted its offense to the opponent. Against Denver, the team repeatedly went inside to Moundou-Missi, who finished with 20 points. In each of the next two games, the senior said, defenses sagged off of him and he took full advantage, launching a dozen three-pointers a game.

“We adapted to the defense,” Rivard said. “Denver played a matchup zone so it was tough to get shots on the perimeter, so we mostly shot inside. Against Green Bay, their perimeter guys let me shoot and in those two games, we moved the ball better. Overall, we are just running the same offense. We can play it inside and if they pack it in we can shoot from outside.”

The team’s defense performed as well as its offense, holding the Horned Frogs to 25-percent shooting from the floor, the second time this year that the Crimson has held its opponent under 30-percent shooting from the floor, both times setting records for the Amaker era.

The Crimson will be going for its eighth win in nine games against Northeastern, looking to tie its best start ever under Amaker. Two years ago, led by Keith Wright ’12 and Oliver McNally ’12, the team started 8-1 with a win at the early-season Battle for Atlantis tournament. That team finished with a 26-5 record and became the first team in Harvard history to make the NCAA tournament, falling in the first round to a Vanderbilt team that sent three players to the NBA.

“We are similar [to that team] in the sense that we got momentum from the preseason tournament,” Rivard said. “We are happy with the way we played but we still need to work on some other [parts of our game].”

—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at david.freed@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @CrimsonDPFreed.