Rourke finished the game with a career-high 27 points on 10-of-14 shooting and pulled down 10 rebounds.

“We talked about Toppert and Collins as being critical,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. “But this was the first time that an inside player got really significant numbers against us.”

Rourke’s 20 second-half points came on 7-of-8 shooting, while the rest of the squad went 9-for-15 for a combined field-goal percentage of 69.6 over the final 20 minutes of the contest.

“They shot 70 percent in the second half,” Norman said. “You can’t really win a game like that...That’s lights out.”

With Cornell’s top three scorers held in check and Harvard taking care of the ball in a fashion not seen in years, it should have been lights out for the Big Red.

But thanks to a career night from a junior transfer and a career weekend from an unseasoned freshman, Cornell overcame its silenced stars and held on to its second-place position in the Ivy standings.

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