Rookie Christian Webster, pictured here in earlier play, proved an offensive force in Harvard’s 77-51 win over Bryant on Friday. His 12 points tied senior Jeremy Lin for the most on the team, and after Crimson coach Tommy Amaker sat Lin to rest, Webster carried the offensive load.

The Harvard men’s basketball team is off to its best start since 2005 after it improved to 3-0 with a victory over Bryant, 77-51, at Lavietes Pavilion Friday night.

Co-captain guard Jeremy Lin and freshman guard Christian Webster each had 12 points to lead a well-balanced attack by the Crimson, which started the game slowly but found a rhythm in the second half and never looked back. The Bulldogs fell to 0-4 with the loss.

“We were certainly pleased with the second half,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said. “I thought it was a team effort by our group, and I thought we were able to wear them down.”

The first twenty minutes were a different story, as neither team was able to pull ahead in the frame. Sloppiness—including missed lay-ups, botched rebounds, and miscommunication on defense—marred the play of both sides.

Lin energized the crowd when he drove down the right baseline and dunked to make it 4-2 in favor of the Crimson, and Harvard later went on a seven-point run to take a 17-10 lead—capped by a Webster three with 12:46 to go. But the Bulldogs wouldn’t go away without a fight, cutting the deficit to 17-16 two minutes later.

“We let them stay in the game, gave them some confidence,” senior forward Pat Magnarelli said.

Harvard went up by four with 3:53 remaining after a great pass from Lin to a cutting Magnarelli, who threw down a two-handed dunk.

A minute and a half later, the Crimson opened an eight-point lead on a Lin three, but Bryant came back with a three of its own to cut the lead to five.

Lin responded with another three-pointer as time expired in the half, putting the Crimson up eight going into the break, and the team never looked back.

Starting the second half on a 18-5 run, Harvard opened up a 21-point lead with 11:49 to go, capped by a short jumper from freshman Brandyn Curry.

With his team sporting a healthy lead at the top of the half, Lin was taken out of the game, and Webster and Magnarelli picked up the scoring load.

“Within the first four minutes, we pushed the lead up to about fifteen, and from there it was just maintaining the lead, playing hard on defense, hitting our shots,” said Magnarelli, who scored six points in a four-minute span early in the second half to help Harvard build its lead.

Magnarelli finished with 11 points in 17 minutes, the second-consecutive productive game from the forward who missed his entire junior season with a knee injury.

Connecting on five of seven field goals, Webster was also effective in the 20 minutes he made it on the court.

Harvard was still up by 20 with under eight minutes to go in the contest, when Lin made a huge block and followed it with a nice pass to sophomore guard Max Kenyi, who cut down the baseline and hit a layup to finish the fast break. Harvard scored 16 points in transition, compared to just two for Bryant.

After a Bryant three, starting guard sophomore Oliver McNally converted on a three-point play with 6:49 remaining, and the lead got as large as 26 on a three by freshman Dee Giger with 1:58 to go.

Fellow highly-touted freshman Kyle Casey also posted formidable stats. The forward showed instances of dominance in the paint, calling for the ball often and finishing with seven points and seven rebounds in 18 minutes. Curry added six points, four rebounds, and three assists in the same amount of time.

Bryant, meanwhile, continued to have enormous troubles shooting the ball. The Bulldogs shot just 28.6 percent in the second half and started just 1-for-14 from the three-point line.

The Crimson led in nearly every statistical category. Perhaps most impressive was its points in the paint, where it dominated Bryant 40-16. Though he had trouble finishing, sophomore Keith Wright ended up with nine points.

The entire Harvard roster saw minutes in the blowout victory. Freshmen Jeff Georgatos, Spencer de Mars, and Peter Edelson all logged their first minutes, and Georgatos collected two points and a rebound.

Amaker continued to use the extended rotation to keep his players fresh. Ten different players saw 14 minutes or more of playing time for the Crimson, whose bench outscored the Bulldogs’, 43-20.

The even distribution of minutes, as well as the extended second-half lead, resulted in more rest for Lin, who—after scoring a combined 43 points in his first two games—played a season-low 27 minutes and attempted only seven shots. Instead, he tried to open things up for his teammates, finishing with six assists.

“I thought [Jeremy] was very efficient,” Amaker said. “He’s responsible for so many more points than he ever scores for our team, and there are times when he scores a lot.”