The Crimson also twice missed on the front end of a one-and-one during the stretch.
Harvard’s run to take the lead began when the Crimson worked the ball around the perimeter and took advantage of the shot clock, culminating in a three-pointer by junior shooting guard Kevin Rogus that brought Harvard within three at 12-9 4:54 into the game.
Rogus followed with another trifecta and then Beal scored nine of the Crimson’s next 14 points.
Junior captain and small forward Jason Norman led Harvard early on, scoring its first six points.
Rogus and Big Red center Eric Taylor—the leading rebounder in the Ivy League entering the night—each picked up a technical after the two banged bodies just over six minutes into the second half.
That foul sent Taylor to the showers, but both teams saw key players struggle with their foul situations. Stehle fouled out in the game’s final minute, while Rogus, Beal, junior point guard David Giovacchini and Cornell power forward Gabe Stephenson—who trailed only Taylor for the conference rebounding lead entering the game—all finished with four fouls.
“We were in foul trouble all night,” Sullivan said. “It comes back to our inability to guard them and really put our hands on people.”
“Anytime that your team’s in foul trouble, it makes you kind of play a lot softer,” Beal said.
Despite the foul trouble, Stehle played 35 minutes and led the Crimson with 20 points—including an eight-for-nine performance from the free-throw line—and 16 rebounds with nine coming on the offensive end. The double-double was Stehle’s—and Harvard’s—third of the season.
As a team, the Crimson was 17-for-21 from the charity stripe for the game and 14-for-16 in the second half alone.
Toppert—who trailed only Barnes in the conference scoring race entering the night—and Barnes led all scorers with 23 and 22 points, respectively, while Rogus—who was third in the conference in scoring before the game—finished with 19.
Small forward Lenny Collins matched Rogus with 19 points for the Big Red.
For Harvard, Norman finished with 15—11 coming in the first half—in a game-high 38 minutes, and Beal followed up his career-high 14 points in the Crimson’s last game—a 91-69 loss at Sacred Heart Jan. 14—with 13 more.
Harvard, which entered the game with the worst scoring defense in the Ivy League, gave up 91 points for the second consecutive game, while that figure represented a season high for Cornell, the highest scoring team in the conference.
The Big Red also put together a big comeback in its last game, overcoming a 13-point halftime deficit to beat Columbia 66-53 on Jan. 24.
—Staff writer Alan G. Ginsberg can be reached at aginsber@fas.harvard.edu.