Men's Basketball to Take on Houston

On November 25, 2014, the Harvard men’s basketball team took to the court at Lavietes Pavilion to take on Houston in what at its best could be categorized as a trap game before the Crimson’s annual matchup with UMass and at its worst was an opportunity for Harvard coach Tommy Amaker to give his reserves some action before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Houston coach Kelvin Sampson had recently returned from an NCAA-imposed hiatus from college basketball and would lead his team to a 10th-place finish in the American Athletic Conference that year. Amaker and the Crimson were riding high on that November evening. Harvard would go on to finish the season 22-8 and win a share of its fifth consecutive Ivy League title. The hosts took the contest in dominating fashion, 84-63.

In the two-plus years since the teams last met, the tables have turned. A veteran Cougars team rolls into Friday night’s matchup at Hofheinz Pavilion (8:00 PM, ESPN2) riding a three-game winning streak. Houston has picked up victories in nine of its first 11 contests.

The Cougars will most likely be the best team the Crimson faces during its nonconference slate and Houston is playing better right now than any of the other seven Ivy League teams. The Cougars are ranked 48th in the most recent Pomeroy College Basketball Rankings. For context, Harvard is ranked 155th and the highest-ranked team the Crimson has faced this season, Stanford, comes in at No. 80. While no one is getting this year’s Houston team confused with the Phi Slama Jama teams of the early 1980s, Sampson’s bunch looks like it has a shot to break the school’s six-year NCAA Tournament drought.

Harvard (4-4) has also won its last three contests but has struggled to play a full 40 minutes to begin the season. The Cougars are a perfect 6-0 at home, with its best win coming against a Rhode Island team that began the season ranked 23rd in the nation. It has been 16 days since the Crimson’s last contest, as the team has not scheduled games over finals period since 2008. Amaker is 4-3 in the first game back after the long break.

The good news for Harvard is that Houston’s Achilles’ heel is in the interior. In its two losses, the Cougars have conceded a total of 86 points in the paint and 36 offensive rebounds. Freshman forward Chris Lewis and senior center Zena Edosomwan will play key roles for the Crimson as it attempts to exploit this weakness. Lewis had 22 points against Boston College and his team finished the contest with 34 points in the paint.

While Lewis and the rest of Harvard’s freshmen have had the scoring touch of late, co-captain Siyani Chambers has been the catalyst for the Harvard offense. The senior has posted double-digit assist outputs in each of the Crimson’s last three contests. Harvard has had five different leading scorers through eight games this season.

Houston’s offense goes through a pair of upperclassman guards. Junior Rob Gray and senior Damyean Dotson both average over 30 minutes a game and combine to give Sampson 36 points per contest. Gray is a pure scorer who is adept at getting to the free throw line while Dotson, a transfer from Oregon, can stroke the three while also fighting for rebounds as the larger of the two wings. Sophomore point guard Galen Robinson, Jr. gets the offense cooking for the Cougars. The local product averages six assists per game and joins Gray and Dotson in averaging 30 minutes a night.

The big question mark for the Crimson on the defensive end is how it will defend Houston’s three-headed monster along the perimeter. Amaker has opted for a smaller starting lineup during the three-game winning streak, with freshman forward Seth Towns sliding down to counter the opponent’s power forward and wing Justin Bassey or point guard Bryce Aiken covering a wing.

Co-captain Siyani Chambers will be on Robinson and Amaker will likely task sophomore shooting guard Corey Johnson with covering Dotson, according to Harvard’s “shooters know shooters” mantra. Whether it is Towns, Bassey, Aiken, or some combination of the three covering Gray, the Crimson will need to frustrate the AAC’s second-leading scorer on the offensive end in order to have a chance at winning. The Cougars as a team are shooting nearly 50 percent from the field and are only averaging 10.2 turnovers per contest. Harvard has not allowed an opponent to shoot above 47 percent on the season.

The game will be a homecoming for junior Zach Yoshor. The 6’6” guard starred at Beren Academy, a small, Orthodox Jewish Day School in Houston. Yoshor led the Stars to the state finals as a junior and to the semifinals during his senior season.

—Staff writer Stephen J. Gleason can be reached at stephen.gleason@thecrimson.com.