The last player to leave the floor, Javier Duren jogged off the court at Lavietes Pavilion, his index finger pointed in the air.
Yale basketball’s 6-foot-4 point guard entered Friday night’s matchup with Harvard as a sidekick — the No. 2 option on the league’s No. 2 team. But as he passed by a cheering visitor’s section toward the locker room, Duren had accomplished what no player or team had been able to for so long: knock the Crimson from the top of the Ivy League.
Javier Duren scored 22 points to lead Yale past Harvard and into the Ivy League driver’s seat with one game left to play. Photo Credit: Steve Musco / Yale Athletics
The Bulldogs senior scored a game-high 22 points, and Yale beat Harvard 62-52 to clinch at least a share of the Ivy League title. A win tonight or a Crimson loss will give the Bulldogs the outright championship and the team’s first NCAA tournament berth since 1962.
Harvard, meanwhile, had its hopes of scoring unprecedented fifth straight Ivy championship and fourth consecutive tournament berth seriously damaged.
The Crimson, which has struggled all season on offense, once again failed to establish a rhythm.
Harvard missed 15 of its 17 three-point attempts and shot just 32.7 percent from the field.
Corbin Miller, the team’s top three-point shooter, went 0-of-8 from deep.
“I thought we had a ton of shots,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said. “We just didn’t make them. I don’t know what else to say.”
But even despite the team’s offensive struggles, it looked like Harvard might find a way to win.
After trailing by as many as 12 in the second half, the Crimson took the momentum on a Steve Moundou-Missi alley-oop dunk with 5:25 to play and, less than two minutes later, cut the deficit to two on a pair of Siyani Chambers’ free throws.
As the second attempt passed through the net, it seemed as if the back-to-back-to-back-to-back Ivy League champs would make another slow start irrelevant.
But on Yale’s next trip down the court, Duren nailed a stepback jumper from right elbow to put the Bulldogs back up by four with 3:10 to go.
The Crimson missed on the other end, and Yale once again put the ball in Duren’s hands. This time the point guard zipped a pass to Matt Townsend who drilled an open jumper.
Moundou-Missi answered with two free throws, and the Crimson was back within striking distance, 47-43, with 1:59 left.
This was the bend-but-don’t-break moment. The point where past Crimson teams have buckled down, gotten stops and closed out big conference games. But this time, Javier Duren spotted up on the left wing, caught a pass on the perimeter and, before his defender could close out, let a three-pointer fly.
It was good, and the Harvard side went silent as the seriousness of the situation registered.
Of course, Harvard fans should have known that the Crimson’s inconsistent shooting and offensive misdirection would eventually catch up with the team, but until Duren hit that three-pointer it always seemed like a just a possibility.
But that bucket put the Bulldogs up by 7 with 88 ticks remaining, and that was too much for the Crimson to overcome.
“I thought Duren was outstanding tonight,” Amaker said. “I thought his poise and his toughness and his confidence, it can be very contagious for their ballclub. He was the best player on the floor.”
That’s saying something considering Friday’s matchup featured the two frontrunners for Ivy League Player of the Year: Yale’s Justin Sears and Harvard’s Wesley Saunders.
But Sears was hampered by foul trouble and finished with just 10 points and 7 rebounds. Saunders had a solid first half — 8 points — but finished with just 11 points. Moundou-Missi finished with a team-high 21 for the Crimson.
Yale will attempt to punch its ticket to the NCAA tournament tonight at Dartmouth. The Crimson, meanwhile, will look to bounce back at home against Brown.
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