“Harrison, at this point, is a terrific post defender and rebounder,” Thompson said. “He’s going to be a terrific, terrific player here one day.”
“He’s a good leaper,” Sullivan said. “I don’t think anybody really has a bead on him on our team and he made some things happen defensively for them.”
All three of Schaen’s blocks—including two on one possession—came in the final 3:50 of the game, although only one was on a Stehle shot.
Schaen made a game-saving block at the end of the first overtime of the Tigers’ double-overtime victory over the Crimson Feb. 7 at Princeton.
WE DON’T WANT YOUR CHARITY
Despite its difficulties from the floor, the Crimson still had a legitimate chance to knock off the top team in the Ivy League. But Harvard—which was shooting a conference-leading 72.5 percent from the charity stripe entering the night—went cold from the line, shooting just 13-24 (54.2 percent), including 7-16 (45.7 percent) in the second half.
“It certainly hurt us tonight,” Sullivan said. “In similar circumstances with our win at Cornell [Feb. 21], we were making these free throws down the stretch and I think we needed some free-throw shooting tonight certainly. For being a good free-throw shooting team, it’s one of our poorer ones. You wouldn’t think it would happen at home.”
More importantly, many of those misses came at critical times.
After Princeton erased a three-point Crimson advantage with four points in the paint, sophomore forward Luke McCrone had a chance to put Harvard back ahead, but missed both free throws. A minute later, he missed the back end of a one-and-one.
Stehle—who was shooting 73.0 percent from the line entering the night, good for 10th in the conference—had a chance to tie the game with 6:36 to play, but missed the second of his free throws.
Junior center Graham Beatty went to the line with 3:46 to play and a chance to extend Harvard’s two-point advantage, but missed the first before converting the second.
Finally, junior point guard David Giovacchini had a chance to give the Crimson a lead with 1:54 to play, but missed his first shot before hitting the second for Harvard’s final point.
ARC MARK
Rogus’ three trifectas Saturday night gave him 74 for the season, breaking the school record of 73 set by Keith Webster ’87 during the 1986-1987 season.
Rogus missed his first three-point attempt, but hit his 72nd of the season 6:15 into the game, giving the Crimson a 12-11 lead.
Rogus then missed his next four shots from three-point range—including one that would have brought Harvard within one 24 seconds before halftime and another that was blocked by Penn’s Jeff Schiffner—but tied the record with 5:26 to play and then broke it 1:14 later on his last shot of the game.
“I went through a stretch there of about 10 minutes where I didn’t do anything productive,” Rogus said. “I was just happy I did something productive.”
Webster shot 45.1 percent—the third-best percentage in school history—over 162 attempts to set the mark, while Rogus hit 34.3 percent of his 216 to break it.
—Staff writer Alan G. Ginsberg can be reached at aginsber@fas.harvard.edu.