Men's Basketball Rebounds, Drops Columbia on the Road

NEW YORK—Corbin Miller for three. Columbia timeout. Corbin Miller for three. Corbin Miller for three. Corbin Miller for tw—actually make that three as well.

Twelve points in under three minutes. A six-point lead transformed into a 15-point gulf. Senior wing Wesley Saunders yelling. Redemption.

Miller’s outburst during the Harvard men’s basketball team’s 80-70 win over Columbia Saturday night was a total departure from his three-point performance the night before.

Of course, Miller was not the only player who let the Crimson (20-6, 10-2 Ivy) down during a 57-49 loss at Cornell Friday. His three straight missed free throws with 1:47 left in the game certainly hurt (especially coming from somebody shooting 88 percent from the line going in). But Saunders shot just six-of-21 in the loss. Co-captains Steve Moundou-Missi and Siyani Chambers combined to shoot 32 percent. The team as a whole made just 25 percent of its shots in that game, costing the Crimson sole possession of first place in the Ivy League.

And Miller was not the only one to bounce back Saturday. They all did. Saunders tallied a team-high 21 points. Moundou-Missi tallied 17 points and 11 rebounds. Chambers had six assists compared to two turnovers. The team combined to shoot a season-high 59 percent from the field in a game it never trailed.

But it was Miller’s misses at the free throw line Friday that Harvard coach Tommy Amaker called indicative of the team’s performance in the loss, and it was his solar fusion of a hot streak Saturday that represented a Crimson team clicking again offensively at just the right time.

“He’s strong-willed and he’s a hooper,” Saunders said of Miller. “He is a shooter and he has that mindset that if he has an off night like that, he’s going to come back the next night and lock in.”

Harvard had started Saturday’s game hot, jumping out a 6-0 lead and turning that into a 13-point advantage at halftime. But then the Crimson scoring stopped. It put up just eight points in eight minutes. It went five minutes without making a field goal. It held onto a lead—one that slowly shrunk from 14 to nine to six to four points—thanks only to Saunders ability to get to the line and knock down a few free throws.

On the other end, the Ivy League’s top scorer was bringing a full Lions (13-13, 6-7 Ivy) crowd to its feet. Maodo Lo finished with 33 points, despite being guarded by Saunders, one of the conference’s best defenders. Lo cut the deficit to six with 11 minutes to play on a driving lay-in, instigating yet another roar from the fans.

The Crimson had seen this story unfold before, losing a 17-point lead to these same Lions two weeks ago before making a shot in the final seconds to escape with a win.

But this time would be different. Miller made sure of it. Thirty seconds after Lo’s layup, the Harvard guard knocked down a jumper for his first points of the game.

A possession later, Miller started a streak of three straight trips down the floor with a made three-pointer, despite two intervening timeouts. The Lions had gone into a zone defense to combat Harvard’s size, and Miller made them pay.

“He changes [the game], especially if you are silly enough to stay in zone,” Columbia coach Kyle Smith said.

Determined not to let Miller make another three, Lion senior Noah Springwater ran out towards the shooter when he got the ball on the next possession. Miller responded by taking a couple steps in and to his left before rising up. Springwater, trying to get back in position, nailed Miller on the arm, nearly knocking the ball out of his hands. But Miller held on, and realizing he had been fouled, threw up a shot to earn free throws. The shot went in. Miller then stepped to the free throw line, where he missed more attempts in one trip on Friday than he had missed all season before that, and knocked down the exclamation point.

“I think he’s a game-changer for us,” Amaker said. “We’ve seen that before in how streaky he can become and obviously it was very much needed.”

While Miller was taking the game over on one end, Harvard’s defense began pressuring Columbia in the backcourt, causing a five-second violation, forcing a timeout, and generally throwing Lo and the Lions out of their rhythm.

Lo still finished with as many points as any Crimson player has scored in a game this season, but it would not be enough. Harvard, thanks to Miller, cleared its last hurdle before a season-altering game Friday when Ivy League co-leader Yale comes to Cambridge in the penultimate game for both teams.

—Staff writer Jacob D. H. Feldman can be reached at jacob.feldman@thecrimson.com.