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1st |
2nd |
Final |
| Penn (14-6, 6-0 Ivy) |
35 |
46 |
81 |
| Harvard (12-9, 4-4 Ivy) |
18 |
50 |
68 |
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| Lavietes Pavilion – Allston, MA |
Boxscore |
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| Keys to the Game |
| Key sequence |
Leading 17-7 midway through the first half, Mark Zoller found Steve Danley inside for a layup. After Harvard freshman Evan Harris missed a wild shot inside, Zoller buried a three-pointer off a returned favor from Danley. Just 90 seconds later Zoller drilled another three to stretch the Penn advantage to 18 at 25-7. |
| Key sign it was over |
With 3:10 left, Harvard had cut a 24-point Penn lead down to 11 with a 17-4 run. Ibby Jabber came up with his sixth steal of the game and went in for a fastbreak layup and a foul that he converted into a three-point at the line. After a Harvard layup, Jaaber got inside for a another layup before the Harvard defense had a chance to get set up. Two free throws by Harvard’s Drew Housman cut Penn’s lead back to 12, but Zoller got out in front of the defense on the inbounds play and went in for a layup and a foul that he also made into a conventional three-point play. After Harvard’s Matt Stehle missed a three-pointer, the Quakers hit Jaaber with a high outlet pass and the Quaker guard skied, caught, and passed in one motion to Friedrich Ebede, who dunked emphatically to put Penn up 17 with 1:23 left. |
| Key performance |
Zoller or Jaaber: pick one. Zoller finished with a career-high 26 points on 9-of-14 shooting (including 5 of 7 from beyond the arc), to go with nine rebounds, three assists, a block, and a steal. Jaaber went for 23 points, shooting 9-for-12 and registering six steals. |
| Key statistic |
Penn’s 81 points on 67 possessions. The Quakers’ 1.22 points per possession were the most given up this season by a Harvard defense that had played well up until last night. Penn shot well from the outside (9 of 19, 47.4 percent), outscored the vaunted Crimson frontcourt in the paint (36-30), and cut down on its turnovers from the previous night’s game with 13. |
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| Notes |
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After getting out-toughed by Princeton in the first half on Friday, Harvard came out and played very physically. Jaaber, Zoller, Danley, Ebede, and Eric Osmundson all took shots to the head that left them briefly woozy, and Osmundson left the game late with a shoulder injury after an getting tangled up with the Crimson’s Mike Beal. |
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Harvard trailed 35-18 at intermission, which dropped the Crimson’s mark the past two seasons to 4-23 when behind at halftime. |
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Stehle scored 22 of his career-high 28 points in the second half, including 10 points in just over three minutes as part of a 12-2 Crimson spurt. He added 15 rebounds (six of which were offensive), four assists, seven steals, and a block. |
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The only aspect of the game in which Penn struggled was defensive rebounding. Harvard was able to grab 18 of 40 rebounds at its own end (45.0 percent) and converted those prolonged possessions into 20 second-chance points. |
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Frank Sullivan got just two points in 20 minutes of playing time from his bench. |
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Harvard’s Jim Goffredo bounced back somewhat from his poor performance on Friday night with 11 points, but shot just 4 of 12 from the field and didn’t register an assist. |
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The Penn defense harrassed Harvard freshman point guard Drew Housman into committing nine turnovers, four of which were steals by Jaaber. |
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