“His threes were timely tonight,” Sullivan said. “He had the patience not to try to play outside of himself.”

Senior point guard David Giovacchini led all players with seven assists, his highest total of the Ivy season, while Stehle and Rogus each had four. The Crimson was able to find open players all night, shooting 49 percent from the floor and handing out 23 assists to only 11 turnovers.

“I’m reluctant to talk about [the assist to turnover ratio] because I don’t want to jinx the whole thing,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. “It’s good to see the guys play better offensive basketball, and get each other good shots.”

Harvard appeared to draw energy from the contentious Bulldogs fans in attendance. Yale brought its cheerleaders, a raucous band and a substantial cheering section to Lavietes in the attempt to turn Cambridge into New Haven North.

“It kind of pisses us off that they’re trying to come down here and pretend like this is their home gym,” Cusworth said. “There’s no way that we were going to let them take over the atmosphere of the gym...We let our play prove that point.”

Yale was led by forward Caleb Holmes and guards Casey Hughes and Edwin Draughan, who all had 14 points. Hughes added 11 rebounds for the Bulldogs, and tried two alley-oop jams in the second half, connecting spectacularly on one.

Harvard kept the pressure on until the final buzzer, outscoring Yale 8-1 in the game’s final 45 seconds.

“[The players] wanted to finish the game with a little bit of distance if they could,” Sullivan said. “They really were geared to finish the game in a workmanlike fashion, and they did.”

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