All Harvard needed was a little spark.

A near brawl at the close of the second half during the Harvard men's basketball game against Brown motivated the Crimson (7-11 overall, 3-3 Ivies) to surge past the Bears (8-10,2-4) for a close 66-61 win Saturday night at Briggs Cage.

"[The near-braw] got me a little more intense," sophomore Mike Gilmore (eight points, four rebounds) said. "It seemed to spark us."

Brown had come back from a fivepoint halftime deficit to take a 47-46 lead with 6:58 left in the game.

But then Bear guard Brian Lloyd flew a wild elbow at Crimson sophomore Mike Gilmore after Gilmore had fouled him on a rebound attempt, and both teams rushed down to the scene, hurling a fair amount of trash talk at each other.

"Both teams were very sluggish to start," Harvard Coach Frank Sullivan said. "It's good to see that we took a stand."

"That happens in Ivy League games," Gilmore said, "It's so much more intense."

After that incident, the Crimson seemed to play with a new-found intensity--especially Kyle Snowden.

Immediately following the skirmish, the freshman forward slammed a dunk with authority, staring a 6-0 Crimson run from which it would never look back.

Snowden's team-leading numbers (17 points, 11 rebounds, 70 percent field goal proficiency) will almost assuredly give him his fifth Ivy League Rookie of the Week award in the past month.

"I felt comfy tonight," Snowden said. "[On the rebounds] I must have been a magnet or something--[Brown] didn't really box us out on shots."

"He's playing great," Gilmore said. "He makes all the shots, and it seems like he is in the right spot."

Equally important to the win was the Crimson defense, in particular the play of captain Tarik Campbell (10 points, 5 assists) and junior Jared Leake (7 points, 6 rebounds), who held the Bears' star backcourt [Lloyd, Eric Blackiston, and Alan Cole] to a 19 percent shooting night.

"I really got to give credit to our small guys," Sullivan said.

"It was a good defensive effort," sophomore Darren Rankin (12 points, 9 rebounds) said. "Our guards held their guards off of their game."