Eighty-three Harvard students hit the courts at the Malkin Athletic Center this Saturday to compete in the second-annual Hoops Against Cancer three-on-three charity basketball tournament.

The event raised $417 for the Gillette Center for Women’s Cancers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and pitted students against each other in the first round of a tournament that involves 16 universities from around the Boston area.

The tournament, which was put on by the Harvard Cancer Society, also included a three-point shooting contest and a foul shot contest.

The winners of the all three final rounds of both the men and women’s divisions will compete against the winners of the other 15 Boston-area colleges and universities in a final tournament at Tufts University on April 10.

The champions of the Boston tournament will be given top-of-the-line Reebok shoes and tickets to the Boston Celtics’ last season game at the FleetCenter, said Scott McWilliam, president of the Brothers McWilliam Foundation, which coordinates the area-wide tournament.

Although they said the idea of winning the Boston three-on-three competition is appealing, students kept a laid-back attitude to the friendly competition.

“I don’t care if we win a game, it’s going to be fun and it’s for a great cause,” said Tim R. McLoughlin ’08.

Attendance dropped more than half from last year, when over 200 Harvard students participated, helping to raise over $900, according to Stephanie H. Tung ’06, who organized the event with Katherine Chen ’06 and Jonathan W. Scott ’06.

Tung attributed the low turnout in part to overlap with Junior Parents Weekend, which she said would lessen the number of participants from the class of 2006.

“But we’re having a lot more freshmen show up, and we succeeded in getting grad schools to show,” said Tung.

In addition to a generally low turnout, female participation from Harvard was below last year’s numbers as well.

Compared to the four female teams that competed last year, only one women’s team registered on Saturday, which automatically qualified them for the finals at Tufts University.

“It doesn’t make Harvard girls look very athletic,” said Harvard School of Public Health student Lynne R. Peeples, who played in the tournament and won both the three-point shooting contest and the foul shot contest.

“One benefit of having so many guys is it raises their awareness about breast cancer and women’s cancer in general,” said Kendall McWilliam, vice president of the Brothers McWilliam Foundation. “Unless they’ve been affected by it personally, they’re not likely to be aware of it.”

Despite lower participation this year, Harvard has had the largest participation of the 16 schools in both of the past two years, said Scott McWilliam. Participants were rewarded with raffle prizes from various Harvard Square sponsors.

Hoops Against Cancer, which raised $20,000 last year when it was known as The Boston Shoot for the Cure, was started by Scott and Kendall McWilliam when their mother Darrell McWilliam was diagnosed with phase one breast cancer in Jan. 2003.

The sports-style charity event was prompted by March Madness and an effort to unify the colleges in the Boston area, they said.

“Very few charity events take place which connect all the colleges and bring everyone together,” said Scott McWilliam. “We hope to expand to the [colleges] we don’t have, then to Massachusetts, then to New England.”

The brothers said they would like their program to ultimately culminate in a battle played out at the FleetCenter between winners from New York City and Boston.