The Harvard men's basketball team has fallen on hard times as of late and things will only get rougher as the Crimson embark on a crucial two game road trip this weekend when it travels to perennial powerhouses Princeton and Penn.

Harvard (12-10, 5-5 Ivy) is coming off two tough losses at Brown and Yale this past weekend and is hoping to snap its recent three game losing skid. The recent slide has dropped the Crimson into a fifth place tie with Columbia in the Ivy League standings and has virtually taken the Crimson out of contention for the conference championship.

The Crimson had a terrible weekend last time out, with poor shooting and costly turnovers resulting in a 66-58 loss to Yale on Friday night followed by a 90-82 loss to Brown on Saturday night.

Meanwhile, Princeton (11-10, 6-3) and Penn (9-15, 6-3) are in a three-way tie with Yale for first place in the conference and both teams will need to post multiple victories this weekend to keep pace.

Harvard will be looking for a little redemption when it takes on Princeton tonight at Jadwin Gym. Less than two weeks ago, Harvard suffered a heartbreaking, last-second loss to the Tigers at Lavietes Pavilion.

In that game, sophomore guard Pat Harvey scored a game-high 20 points and captain Dan Clemente added 19 points including a clutch jumper with 7.4 seconds remaining that put Harvard up 67-66.

Following a time-out, however, Princeton junior guard Ahmed El-Nokali pushed the ball up court and dished the ball off to sophomore guard Kyle Wente, who released an off-balance three pointer that sliced through the net as time expired giving Princeton the 69-67 victory.

More recently, the Tigers are just coming off a stunning 66-49 loss to Cornell last weekend. Wente led the Tigers with 14 points, but Cornell dominated the game from start to finish behind 15 points and 9 rebounds from Ray Mercedes. The Big Red had four players score in double figures and the Tigers never got closer than 10 points.