“Our defensive rebounding numbers were fair, they have to improve,” Sullivan said.

Solid defense will help bail out streaky Harvard shooting. Even when Harvey—the team’s best shooter—hit only 3-of-12 against Fairfield and 3-of-10 against Stony Brook, the Crimson defense held on to win those games. Harvard has held three of its first five opponents under 40 percent from the field this season.

“Our thinking [on offense] gets back to defense—creating easy baskets for ourselves, creating offense from our defense, creating more posessions by being a good defensive rebounding team. I think those things can help negate the whole component of times when shooting can be fickle,” Sullivan said.

In a league traditionally dominated by Princeton and Penn, Harvard finds itself in the middle of the pack. Brown and Columbia both have candidates for Player of the Year: Bears guard Earl Hunt may be the top player in the league and the Lions’ Craig Austin is last year’s award winner. Harvard may not have an individual to compare with those two, but as a unit they should be able to make some noise.

“Strange things can happen—I know they haven’t [in the past],” Sullivan said.

Gellert and Harvey are more optimistic.

“Our goal at the beginning of the year is to win the Ivy League championship, and it’s a legitimate goal,” Gellert said. “We’ve been in the games against the top teams the last couple of years, and we’ve won games against the top teams. All it’s going to take is the consistency to win on the road, which we haven’t been able to do,” he added.

“We have the talent to be in the hunt,” Harvey added. “The Ivy League is pretty wide open. Anybody can beat anybody.”