Four-hour challenge:
Start: 19:05 2/18/2012
Finish: 22:26 2/18/2012
CAMBRIDGE, MA — Harvard (23-3, 9-1 Ivy) beat Yale again 66-51 to tie the school’s record for victories. Harvard set the program’s record with 23 wins last season, when it tied for first place in the Ivy League.
With four games left in the season, Harvard is on track to claim sole ownership of the Ivy League title this season and make it into the NCAA tournament for the first time since its sole appearance in 1946. The Ivy League does not have a conference tournament so the top team in the league receives an automatic bid for the NCAA tournament next month.
Harvard also extended its home win streak to 27 games, the second longest home court winning streak after Kentucky, which also extended its home winning streak to 50-0. Harvard is 10-0 at home and has yet to lose at Lavietes Pavilion this season.
Led by the inside-outside duo of guard Brandyn Curry and forward Keith Wright, Harvard dominated Yale in virtually every category: field goal percentage, 3-point field goal percentage, rebounds, assists, as well as points in the paint. The Crimson made 54.3% (25-46) of its shots and outrebounded Yale 33-22.
Keith Wright scored 10 points and hauled in 8 rebounds, tying Brian Cusworth’s school career block record with 147. Brandyn Curry led Harvard with 18 points and 5 assists. Guard Oliver McNally added 9 points and 2 assists while forward Kyle Casey chipped in 8 points.
Saturday evening’s loss to Harvard drops Yale’s Ivy League record to 17-7 and 7-3 in the Ivy League. Yale was led by center Greg Mangano, who had 22 points, 11 rebounds and 5 block shots. Unfortunately, Mangano received little support from his teammates, none of whom scored more than 8 points.
Harvard climbed into the Top 25 men’s basketball teams for the first time this season. However, the Crimson fell out of the Top 25 after each loss. Harvard has lost three times this season: to University of Connecticut December 8, Fordham January 3 and Princeton February 11.
Next weekend, Harvard will play Princeton (15-10, 6-3 Ivy) and Penn (15-11, 7-2 Ivy) at home. After that, Harvard will have two more league games against Columbia (14-12, 3-7 Ivy) and Cornell (10-14, 5-5 Ivy).
Awesome photograph!
Thank you. Unfortunately, I didn’t take the photo. I lifted it off the Harvard Athletics web site.
I commented on the professionalism of this story in class – I had no idea you’d not written sports before. I was particularly struck with the work you put into contextualizing the story for your audience. That’s very hard to do with sports – we assume our readers are fans, otherwise they wouldn’t be reading. But you’ve done good work connecting this story to larger narratives of Harvard and the NCAA.