“We just want to finish up what we started, and go out with a bang,” Cusworth said. “I’m fully confident that we can take this weekend and the next two weekends.”

IN LIKE A LION

If Harvard hopes to avenge its earlier road loss at Columbia on Friday night, it will have to play better in the early going. The Crimson has habitually started games slowly of late—Yale put 12 points on the board before Harvard scored a single basket in New Haven, and the Crimson was up by just one against Brown at halftime in a game they eventually won by double figures.

A bad first half was also pivotal in Harvard’s 57-55 loss to the Lions in New York. Sloppy play and poor shooting out of the gate resulted in a 34-23 halftime deficit, which the Crimson trimmed significantly once it got going after the intermission.

“We need to plan on coming out with the energy that we had at the beginning of the Cornell game,” Cusworth said, “[to] establish the line of scrimmage right from the get go.”

Harvard’s 74-65 win at Cornell, in which they outscored the Big Red by 10 in the first half, was played on a Friday night, when the team was fresh, whereas the losses at Columbia and Yale were both early Saturday games—2 p.m. in New York, and 5:30 p.m. in New Haven.

“It’s the classic Saturday night [scenario]—Saturday night legs,” Sullivan said. “That extra hour of rest on Saturday night might make a difference.”

Back to its normal home schedule this weekend, Harvard should be well rested for both games, and will look to exploit a tired Cornell team, which plays at Dartmouth Friday night, right out of the gate.

—Staff writer Caleb Peiffer can be reached at cpeiffer@fas.harvard.edu.