Late Comeback Pushes Men's Basketball Over Houston

Coming into Friday’s matchup against Houston, Harvard freshman Bryce Aiken was shooting 24 percent from beyond the arc. With a little over five minutes left in the second half, however, that didn’t seem to matter too much to the freshman.

After driving into the lane and missing a tough layup, Aiken grabbed his own rebound and hit a corner three to put the Crimson within four. After getting a stop on the other end, Aiken came back and hit another to put Harvard within a possession, 54-53.

After the two teams traded layups, and with a just over a minute left on the clock, Houston redshirt senior Damyean Dotson drove into the lane and threw up a floater that would have given the Cougars a three-point lead. Senior Zena Edosomwan had other plans.

After swatting the floater, Edosomwan ran the floor and seconds later Aiken found him for the layup. 57-56 in favor of Harvard.

Edosomwan’s late layup would prove to be the go-ahead bucket as a last-second heave for Houston (9-3) would bounce off the iron into co-captain Siyani Chambers’ hands.

The upset by the Crimson (5-4) was perhaps as unexpected as the fashion in which the guests won the game. In a matchup where two of Harvard’s primary scorers—freshman Seth Towns and sophomore Corey Johnson—combined for four points, it would be a combination of defense and some clutch shooting that gave the Crimson the late victory.

Despite the late game heroics, Harvard came into the second half having given up an early seven-point lead. Through the first 15 minutes of the game, the Crimson would draw plenty of contact en route to 11 of its first 25 points at the line.

The points at the charity stripe would prove to be pivotal as Harvard shot only 28 percent through the first period. Beyond the shooting woes, the Crimson also struggled on the boards early—through the first half the Crimson was outrebounded, 24-18.

Though the Crimson struggled to make buckets late in the first, the defense came together to shut down Houston’s two leading scorers. Through the half, Harvard held Dotson and redshirt junior Rob Gray to nine points on 3-of-16 shooting. For its part, the Crimson was held scoreless for a period of over four minutes late in half.

Despite an 8-0 run from the Cougars in the last four minutes of the first period, Harvard would close the half on a dish from Chambers to freshman Henry Welsh that would cut the Cougar lead to four as the buzzer sounded.

In the second half, Harvard would go on and off much like it had throughout the first. After a jump shot from Chambers five minutes into the half cut the Houston lead to three, the Crimson wouldn’t score for another five minutes. For their part, the Cougars had built up their lead to nine in that span.

Late in the game though, Aiken took over. After going 1-of-3 from the field for eight points in the first half, he would go off for 13 in the second on 3-of-4 from deep while adding two steals and the go-ahead assist. He would finish the game with 21 points, three assists, and three steals.

Fueled by Aiken’s consecutive threes, Harvard closed the game on a 10-2 run to extend its winning streak to four and hand the Cougars their third loss of the season.

—Staff writer Troy Boccelli can be reached at troy.boccelli@thecrimson.com.