“Right now, we’re just having trouble playing like we can for a full 40 minutes,” Stehle said. “At Princeton, we came close, but in the last two minutes we had a couple of turnovers. Against Cornell, we dominated for 30 to 32 minutes.”
Once again, the keys to this weekend’s games for Harvard will be playing strong defense and avoiding foul trouble. Stehle and sophomore point guard Michael Beal lead the team with 3.8 and 3.5 fouls per game, respectively. As a unit, Harvard commits 21.5 fouls per game, placing it second in the Ivies.
“It hurts the team a lot when we get in foul trouble,” Norman said. “Sometimes it’s officiating, sometimes it’s us. We’re concerned, but we don’t want people to soften up.”
Against Brown, the defensive effort will center on stopping Jason Forte, the third-leading scorer in the Ivy League. Last weekend Forte put together two monster games, dropping 30 points on Cornell and 23 on Columbia. He also added 14 assists on the weekend.
“He’s one of the best players in the league,” Norman said. “His game is getting to the basket, getting to the free-throw line. It’ll be a challenge for whoever guards him.”
Forte leads a prolific Bear offense that has topped 80 points in each of its last three games.
“They run a motion offense, and we have had some trouble in the past against the motion offense,” Stehle said. “The key will be keeping the ball out of the middle.”
Yale will provide a bit of a change-up in terms of defensive matchups, as the Bulldogs’ leading scorer is center Dominick Martin. Crimson junior center Graham Beatty faces the challenge of containing Martin while avoiding the foul trouble that plagued him last Saturday against Princeton’s Judson Wallace.
Harvard must also be concerned with Yale’s dangerous perimeter players—guards Edwin Draughan and Alex Gamboa. Gamboa scored 16 against Cornell last Saturday, and Draughan comes into the weekend averaging 11.6 points per game.
“We can’t focus on one particular person because [Yale] is so balanced,” Stehle said. “We’ll need to play great one-on-one defense and collapse on the low post, because they have such a good low post player [in Martin].”
—Staff writer Michael R. James can be reached at mrjames@fas.harvard.edu. /