The Harvard men’s basketball team will be able to look to the past as a source of inspiration for its road swing through New England.

Coming off the biggest win in recent memory, a 61-57 thriller over league-nemesis Princeton, the Crimson will hit I-95 for games against Brown and Yale this weekend. In 1999, the last year Harvard beat the Tigers, the Crimson was able to convert the momentum from that overtime victory into a road sweep of Brown and Yale to finish at 7-7 in league play.

“It’s great that [the 1998-99 team] did that, because we’re looking to do the same thing,” captain Jason Norman said.

Harvard needs to take both games this weekend to maintain its slender shot of advancing into postseason competition. Penn is fast pulling away from the rest of the league—its record stands at 5-0 after a wild comeback win over Princeton—meaning that Harvard has to run the table, and then get help, in order to entertain any notions of playing for a championship on March 5th at the Palestra.

“We have to win out,” junior center Brian Cusworth said. “This is an enormous weekend for us...we need to try to carry our momentum from the Princeton game over.”

OFFENSE IS THEIR FORTE

Facing Brown’s offense on Friday night will be a challenge for Harvard, especially coming on the heels of Princeton’s methodical, shot clock-milking attack. The Bears’ scheme is predicated upon constant motion, with few set plays and more emphasis on energetic ball movement.

“They have some initial sets, but a lot of [the offense] is just them flowing off each other,” Cusworth said. “It’s a very high paced, very aggressive offense.”

Led by reigning Ivy League Player of the Year Jason Forte, a quick and athletic guard who leads the league with 18.2 points per game, Brown aims to ratchet up the speed of the game to a level at which its opponent cannot keep up.

“One of their objectives is to try to blow a team out of the water right from the get-go,” Cusworth said. “One of the most important things is for us to keep the game at our tempo.”

Harvard is already familiar with the devastation Brown’s offensive style can create—all five starters were around last year, when Forte and the Bears used the same frenetic approach to hang a pair of double-digit losses on the Crimson. Brown was one of two Ivy League squads to put up 100 points against Harvard last season, which they did on February 28th in Providence.

NO LOVE LOST

Any notion that the storied Harvard-Yale rivalry had fizzled on the hardwood was dispelled last season. Harvard entered its initial contest against Yale with a 2-18 overall record, but played its most inspired game of the year to shock the Bulldogs, 78-71. The loss was the deadly fourth for Yale, eliminated them from contention in a humiliating manner—only twice has an Ivy team ever won a title with four league defeats on its ledger.

“They’re definitely going to have motivation,” Norman said. “That [loss] put them out of the race last year, and they’re looking to do the same thing to us this year.”

Yale may well get the chance to return the favor Saturday night. If Harvard beats Brown, and the Bulldogs beat Dartmouth, both teams will enter the game in New Haven with three defeats, setting up a scenario where the two rivals would each be fighting for their postseason lives.