"I think that's the one of the advantages of having five seniors out there," Sigafoos said. "We realized that they were going to make a couple of runs, but we're not going to lose our poise. We've got enough experience out there to hold them off. We certainly don't want it to be that close at the end, but we're an experienced team."

Mercer, with its up-tempo pace, found holes in the Crimson defense in the second half, even though Harvard’s defensive schemes were similar to the ones it used in the opening period. The Bears outscored the Crimson, 44-33, in that second frame en route to a 44-percent shooting night.

"I don't know why we were playing that way," Prasse-Freeman said of the Crimson’s late softening on defense. "That's something we're going to have to figure out on the practice courts [Friday]."

There will be plenty to figure out in preparation for the Crimson’s biggest opponent of the season thus far, crosstown rival Boston College (7-2). The Eagles are coming off of a 79-61 win over Stony Brook, in which guard Troy Bell scored his 2000th career point. He is only the fourth BC player to do so.

"We're very confident in terms of the way we're playing," Prasse-Freeman said. "But at the same time, BC is BC. We're going to play as hard as we can, and hopefully we can play with them."

--Staff writer Evan R. Johnson can be reached at erjohns@fas.harvard.edu.