More than free-throw shooting, more than road games and even more than Kyle Wente, one thing continues to be the bane of the Harvard men’s basketball team’s existence—the zone defense.

Things were going pretty smoothly Saturday night through one half, as Harvard led comfortably over Yale, 38-22. Then Bulldogs Coach James Jones switched from a man-to-man to the cursed zone, and the Crimson looked lost.

It wasn’t the first time a zone—or a variation of it—has given Harvard trouble. Northeastern gave the Crimson a startle with it back in November, and Boston University held Harvard to 41 points with a diamond-and-one defensive setup one week later.

So, give credit to James for exploiting a Harvard weakness. If Yale doesn’t make the switch—or alternatively, if Harvard is able to adjust—the Crimson probably coasts to a weekend sweep of Brown and Yale and is a legitimate contender in the Ivy race.

Instead Harvard has two losses—a precarious position when you’ve yet to make the Penn-Princeton road trip. The Crimson faces a do-or-die situation this weekend: sweep Cornell and Columbia, or be effectively eliminated.

The skeptics among us might think that Harvard will not be able to win twice on the road. History suggests that the Crimson is not a good road team.

Then again, the skeptics among us also thought that Harvard would not have a bench this year, that they’d rely too much on the three, that they’d be lost without Dan Clemente.

None of that has happened.