The Harvard men's basketball team has picked the right time to go on a winning streak.

The Crimson won two games handily last weekend, defeating Columbia on Friday, 63-49, and Cornell the next night, 61-75. Coupled with last Monday's defeat of Dartmouth, Harvard (9-6, 3-1 Ivy) has victories in its last three games to stay near the top of the Ivy League.

Penn and Princeton are tied for the league lead with 2-0 records, while Harvard is knotted with Dartmouth for third place. The Crimson will now get time off for exams until the end of January.

The keys for Harvard in both wins were tough defense and having different players step up offensively. Against Columbia, senior center Chris Grancio netted 19 points, and in the Cornell game, junior Mike Scott tallied a career-high 20 points and sophomore Tim Hill added 17.

Harvard also won with strong defensive efforts in the first half, holding Columbia and Cornell to 20 and 22 points before intermission, respectively.

The Big Red, however, made a comeback run over the first eight minutes of the second half, slashing a 16-point halftime deficit to just eight. Much of that scoring came from power forward John McCord, who sat out most of the first half with a head injury but still netted 18 on the night.

But that was as far as Cornell (7-5, 0-2) would get, as Harvard held its opponent to just one field goal and four free throws over the next 8:30 of play. Over the same span, four different Crimson players scored, pushing the lead out to 13. All of Harvard's starters scored in double figures.

"This team has any number of guys who can stand up and score," Scott said.

Cornell's frontcourt often had its way on the offensive end, with McCord and center Jeffrion Aubry going a combined 12-for-15 from the floor. However, the Crimson slowed down Big Red guards Michael Roberts and Alex Compton and caused 19 turnovers.

"I think Harvard really played Columbia  49 Harvard  63

Fairfield  61 Harvard  75

hard and really worked hard tonight," Cornell coach Scott Thompson said. "We're turning the ball over way too many times, and we're trying to do what we can't do."

Nevertheless, the big break for Harvard came when McCord banged his head while trying to come up with an offensive rebound four minutes into the first half. Holding his right temple in pain, McCord did not return until after intermission. While he was out, Harvard outscored Cornell 31-15.

"It's encouraging to see our guys understand what was presented to them [with McCord's injury]," Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. "There's not a quicker forward in the Ivy League."

Against Columbia on Friday night, the opposing player that Harvard had to stop was C.J. Tompkins, as the senior guard had been averaging 20.8 points per game for the Lions. But against Harvard he could only muster 18 points on six-for-19 shooting and hit only one of his nine three-point attempts.

Harvard, meanwhile, got 19 from Grancio and 11 from Hill and senior Kyle Snowden, whose 24 points on the weekend moved him to eighth place on Harvard's all-time scoring list past FOX commentator James Brown '73.

"This is a team that shoots 100 more threes than its opponents," Grancio said. "We wanted to control their guards."

That was the job of Scott, Hill and captain Dave Demian, all of whom played for 30 or more minutes and held the Lions backcourt to 30 percent from the field. From behind the three-point arc, Columbia shot 28.6 percent as a team.

Harvard held a 27-20 advantage at the end of the first half and slowly extended the lead in the second, leading by as much as 18 points late in the game. Columbia went on to lose on Saturday night to Dartmouth, and the Lions record fell over the weekend to 3-9 overall and 0-2 in the Ivies.

HARVARD, 63-49 at Lavietes PavilionColumbia  20  29  --  49Harvard  27  36  --  6