“It’s critical for us to guard because we really labor scoring,” Sullivan said. “We labor with turnovers every game. We labor with scoring every game. If we can guard in games, we can hang around, and tonight was a good example for our team.”

The differences are far more drastic than just the final scores. On Friday night, the Quakers shot 66 percent from the field and 67 percent from behind the arc. But on Saturday, Harvard’s defense clamped down, only allowing the Tigers to hit 36 percent from the field and a dismal 13 percent behind the arc.

The amazing shooting of Penn was a by-product of great ball movement coupled with shooters who couldn’t miss. The less impressive Princeton numbers were caused by a hungrier Crimson defense that was more effective in getting to open shooters and by the lack of a Tiger shooter with a hot hand.

“They did a very good job of taking [shots] away, and not just our threes,” Princeton coach John Thompson III said. “As much as I feel we did a pretty good job on defense, I think that Harvard did a very good job on defense in disrupting and making sure we didn’t have any open, any clear looks.”

—Staff writer Michael R. James can be reached at mrjames@fas.harvard.edu.