NEW YORK—When sophomore forward Zach Martin broke a bone in his hand in practice last week, sidelining him at least through the end of the month, Harvard probably figured depth in the frontcourt would become even more of a problem than it had been all season.

After all, the 6’4 Martin—himself not a natural power forward—had been pressed into service under the hoop by the loss of sophomore center Brian Cusworth to a stress fracture he suffered during preseason.

Martin’s injury left the Crimson with 6’8 junior center Graham Beatty, 6’8 sophomore power forward Matt Stehle and 6’7 sophomore Luke McCrone, along with 6’7 freshman Brian Darcy, who had played just four minutes in three games this season.

But as it turned out, the frontcourt wasn’t the issue in Harvard’s loss to Columbia Friday night.

Stehle made sure of that.

Stehle came out in the first half and scored 15 of the Crimson’s 27 points on 7-for-11 shooting in 19 minutes of action as Harvard outscored the undersized Lions—who started just one player over 6’5—8-4 in the paint and limited Columbia to just one offensive rebound.

For the game, Stehle finished with his—and the Crimson’s—fifth double-double of the season, scoring 21 points while pulling down 12 rebounds and shooting 10-for-17.

“They were able to throw the ball inside to him,” Columbia coach Joe Jones said. “We weren’t doing a good job of attacking him right away. We were allowing him to put pressure on us, and we needed to front him more, so we did that in the second half and it was effective.”

Led by Stehle, Harvard outrebounded the Lions 35-32, holding them to just five offensive rebounds.

“He was the one offensive force that we had tonight,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. “Everybody else across the board really labored scoring. He’s such a stability factor for us.”

Instead of the frontcourt, it was the Crimson’s perimeter players that let the team down.

Columbia turned a 39-39 tie into a 61-47 advantage over 8:34 of the second half by attacking Harvard’s guards with a press the Crimson couldn’t handle.

“They had great success at a critical point in time with the pressure,” Sullivan said.

As the Lions pressed, Harvard fell apart. A five-second violation was called when Stehle couldn’t find anyone open trying to inbound the ball after a timeout. Junior shooting guard Kevin Rogus and sophomore point guard Michael Beal each had passes stolen that led to Crimson fouls. Stehle committed an offensive foul and another turnover. Beatty turned the ball over as well.

In all, Harvard committed 23 turnovers, including eight by Beal.

Even when the Crimson did get into its half-court offense, it couldn’t score from the perimeter. Rogus—the team’s leading scorer—went 0-for-8 from the floor, missing all seven of his three-pointers and scoring just two points. He appeared to be hampered by a nagging leg injury.

“In the first half, what we tried to do was take away his touches,” Jones said. “In the second half, we played it more straight up because we thought we were getting spread out.”

“[Rogus] had a tough night,” Sullivan said. “He was guarded hard. He’s really trying to tough the whole thing out. I don’t know that he has the same mobility.”

“Kevin’s resiliency and his toughness have really been the soul of a lot of our team effort this year, but I know he’s laboring with this,” Sullivan added.

Junior captain and small forward Jason Norman added a 3-for-9 performance—0-for-4 from behind the arc—as Harvard hit just two of its 16 three-point attempts.

The short-staffed Crimson frontcourt, then, surprisingly wasn’t the problem. In fact, led by Stehle, Harvard’s big men managed to more than hold their own. It was just that the Crimson’s backcourt came up a little too small.

—Staff writer Alan G. Ginsberg can be reached at aginsber@fas.harvard.edu.