{"id":350388,"date":"2010-02-22T17:02:22","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T22:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=38631"},"modified":"2010-02-22T17:02:22","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T22:02:22","slug":"winning-and-losing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/350388","title":{"rendered":"Winning and losing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The electricity generated by fans of the Harvard men\u2019s basketball team<\/a> at Lavietes Pavilion on Friday (Feb. 19) was enough to power all of Cambridge, but not enough to help the Crimson take the energy out of first-place Cornell, who won, 79-70. Still, the next night Harvard easily imposed its will on Columbia, 77-57, to earn a weekend split.<\/p>\n

Gunning for Cornell in a rematch of Harvard\u2019s 86-50 loss on Jan. 30, which was its worst this season, the Crimson stood tall and strong through the game\u2019s first eight minutes against the Big Red, clinging to a slight lead. But after tying the game at 16 apiece, Cornell went on a 10-3 run to go up seven, never to trail again.<\/p>\n

Down by as much as 17 in the second half, Harvard went on a spirited 9-0 run to cut the lead to eight. Then, after a Cornell missed shot, Brandyn\u00a0Curry<\/a> \u201913\u00a0drove down the court and found freshman guard Christian Webster<\/a> in the left corner, who knocked down a three-pointer to bring Harvard within five points and force a Cornell timeout.<\/p>\n

Despite chants of \u201cI believe that we will win! I believe that we will win!\u201d from the student section echoing through the stadium, the experienced calm of Cornell showed. Coming out of the timeout, the Big Red drained two consecutive three-pointers to extend the lead to 11, quieting the cheers of the Crimson faithful and halting Harvard\u2019s comeback.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really proud and pleased of an incredible basketball game that we had a chance to be a part of in our arena, with a great environment, with our students being phenomenal for us,\u201d said Harvard coach Tommy Amaker<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to have meaningful games for our program and for our kids right now. Being pretty young overall, hopefully this will pay dividends for us down the road \u2026 this season.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re obviously very thankful for the support we\u2019ve had. I\u2019ve never seen anything like this in my four years, and I\u2019m pretty sure it wasn\u2019t like this before I got here, so we\u2019re very thankful for the student body,\u201d said Jeremy Lin<\/a> \u201910, who led the Crimson in scoring with 24 points. Despite the disappointing outcome, the senior guard acknowledged that the team gave all that it had. \u201cWe don\u2019t regret the effort we gave.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI told our kids it\u2019s not like everything is over and lost. Obviously, our road is pretty tough, [but] one win wasn\u2019t going to put us where we needed to be, and I don\u2019t think one loss is, in terms of putting us out of it,\u201d said Amaker.<\/p>\n

The next night Harvard manhandled the Columbia Lions for its 18th win, behind a career-high 23 points from sophomore guard Oliver McNally<\/a>, who provided a spark off the bench.<\/p>\n

The split keeps Harvard (18-6; 7-3 Ivy League) in third place in the Ivy League. Although the loss to Cornell is deleterious to Harvard\u2019s title hopes, the team still is just two games back.<\/p>\n

Even if Harvard can\u2019t win its first Ivy title this year, the season\u2019s success will be well-documented. With two home games, against Brown (Feb. 26) and Yale (Feb. 27), remaining on the schedule, followed by games at Penn (March 5) and Princeton (March 6), Harvard is on pace for its best season in more than a half century and is two wins away from the first 20-win season in program history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The electricity generated by fans of the Harvard men\u2019s basketball team at Lavietes Pavilion on Friday (Feb. 19) was enough to power all of Cambridge, but not enough to help the Crimson take the energy out of first-place Cornell, who won, 79-70. Still, the next night Harvard easily imposed its will on Columbia, 77-57, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-350388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}