When Harvard’s Elliott Prasse-Freeman talks about “mental toughness,” he probably has games like Saturday’s 78-75 overtime victory over Penn in mind.

The matter-of-fact resilience displayed by the Harvard men’s basketball team Saturday night—first in forgetting a heartbreaking defeat to Princeton the night before, then in overcoming a 14-0 second-half run by Penn—is exactly what the junior point guard has always predicted would be the proof that Harvard had finally come of age.

Last year a crushing two-point loss to Princeton sent Harvard reeling, as the Crimson dropped its next four games.

“We did not respond well to the loss,” Prasse-Freeman said last week. “It was really a product of us not being mentally tough.”

Saturday’s game brought out a different side of this Harvard club. The Crimson’s 50-48 loss to Princeton on Friday—which ended abruptly with a game-tying leaner by junior Sam Winter falling just short—seemed like the furthest thing from the team’s minds.

And when Penn reeled off 14 unanswered points to take a six point lead in the second half, the Crimson didn’t let that bother them in the least. In fact, they hardly even realized it.

During the postgame press conference, junior guard Patrick Harvey expressed genuine surprise when he was asked what the team’s confidence was like after the Quaker spurt.

“They had a 14-0 run on us?” he asked. “Really?”

Harvard probably didn’t notice because it was busy preparing a run of their own. In the second half, from the 10:42 mark on, whenever Penn hit a big basket, Harvard responded in kind. By the waning minutes of overtime, it was Harvard that appeared the more composed of the two teams.

“They outtoughed us. They didn’t get down from adversity. They picked themselves up and made a great comeback,” Penn Coach Fran Dunphy said.

The next test for Harvard will be to see how well it fares on the road. Always a strong team inside Lavietes Pavilion, Harvard has historically struggled to win away from home. But that’s what is necessary to make a run at an Ivy title, and it will require the kind of disciplined approach Harvard showed Satruday.

Captain Marvel

Perhaps intrigued by the fact that Dartmouth guard Flinder Boyd had lit up Penn for 24 points the night before, Harvard’s guards made a concerted effort to take the ball strong inside on Saturday.

Boyd had been shut down by Harvard captain Drew Gellert at Lavietes Pavilion earlier this season, but his success against the Quakers may have hinted at a flaw in Penn’s backcourt defense.