After pulling out a close victory over Cornell Friday night, Harvard again struggled early against Columbia Saturday afternoon. A young team with six freshmen on its roster, the Lions briefly enjoyed a five-point lead over the Crimson with 18:37 remaining in the first half. By halftime, however, Harvard had recovered to claim a 32-27 advantage over Columbia.

"In the first half, we made a lot of small errors, and we couldn't really find an offensive flow," said freshman guard Bree Kelley. "Our offense wasn't really clicking yet, so we had to rely on our defense."

Harvard emerged from the locker room at halftime prepared to raze the Columbia defense and stifle the Lions' struggling offense. For the first five minutes of the second half, the Lions failed to eat away at the Crimson's five-point halftime lead, and Harvard outscored Columbia 41-19 after the break.

"During the second half, we tried to capitalize on the mistakes that [Columbia] made," Kelley said. "We started to put in the important shots, make the big steals and get the rebounds that we needed to win the game."

Harvard shot 42.4 percent from the field and held Columbia to a 27.4 shooting percentage from the field. In the battle of the boards, Harvard outrebounded Columbia 50-37, taking advantage of key put-back opportunities to vanquish the Lions' chances of victory.

"We were rebounding much better [during the second half] because people really started to step it up for us," Boger said.

Harvard 58, Cornell 47

At the end of an intense tug-of-war that lasted for over 35 minutes of play, the Crimson came away with a 58-47 victory over the Big Red (10-8, 2-4) on Friday night at the Newman arena.