Up three at the end of the first half, the Harvard men’s basketball team blazed out of the locker room to start the second, going on an 11-2 run, which stretched its lead to 12 over Rider (2-3). With 14:22 remaining in regulation time, the Crimson squad appeared to be in complete control.

It wasn’t.

When the dust finally settled after three overtime periods, an additional 105 points had been scored since that 14:22 mark.

Harvard may have escaped 85-82, but it required all 17 three-point field goals and 41 attempts from behind the arc—both school records—to do so.

The last trey, senior Elliott Prasse-Freeman’s game-winner with 1:17 remaining, finally put the game away for good.

The Crimson (4-2) almost missed a chance at a third overtime.

Two Broncs free throws with six seconds left in double overtime extended the Crimson deficit to three.

With one second to go, senior guard Pat Harvey caught Prasse-Freeman’s pass and knocked down a trifecta to send the game to yet another extra session.

But this scene was an eerie flashback to just minutes earlier. Harvey had done it only five minutes before to force a second overtime.

While Harvey’s shots saved the game for the Crimson, his efforts would have been for naught without the career-best performance of captain Brady Merchant.

Merchant, Harvard’s leading scorer this season, posted a career-high 25 points, most of which came from his school record-tying seven three-point field goals in 47 minutes.

More important than the quantity of Merchant’s buckets was their timeliness. Each time the game looked as though it were about to fall apart for the Crimson, he was the one who held the effort together.

In the second half, with Rider edging closer to the Crimson, the shooting guard knocked down a three-pointer to re-establish the lead at nine with 4:29 to play.

When Harvard fell behind by seven points in the first overtime, a Merchant trey brought the team within striking distance at 2:45, setting up Harvey’s first game-extending three.

In the final overtime, with each team battling fatigue and struggling to score, it was Merchant who put down a three with 2:27 to go, breaking a span of more than two minutes for both teams without a field goal and giving Harvard the momentum.