Co-captain Jeremy Lin led the Crimson with a team-high 15 points, but it wasn't enough to overcome an athletic Georgetown squad.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Harvard men’s basketball team finally ran out of gas.

Two weeks after taking Connecticut to the wire and defeating Boston College, the Crimson (7-3) broke down in the closing minutes of the first half against No. 13 Georgetown (9-1) and was unable to rebound in the second frame, falling, 86-70, Wednesday at the Verizon Center.

“We’ve been playing with a great deal of spirit and fight,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said. “We’ve been playing pretty well, so [it was] not a very happy moment for our team at the end of the first half through the second half.”

The Crimson’s downfall can at least partly be attributed to co-captain Jeremy Lin’s inability to produce numbers comparable to his previous performances. After scoring 30 and 25 points against the Huskies and Eagles, respectively, Lin was held to just 15 points against an athletic Georgetown team that sent double teams at Lin throughout the game and forced him to cough up a game-high six turnovers.

“We ask a lot of Jeremy,” Amaker said. “I thought he was as good as we could ask him to play against some of the circumstances with a man and a half [defending him] every time he put the ball on the floor.”

For perhaps the first time this season, Lin was outplayed by an opposing guard. 6’1 junior Chris Wright exploded for a career-high 34 points, six rebounds, and six steals for the Hoyas.

“We really take pride in trying to contain scorers,” Wright said. “Some of the bigger schools underestimate [Lin], but he’s very talented, so we just wanted to try to contain and try to force him into tough shots.”

Wright, who was able to attack the basket at will, propelled Georgetown to an 11-point halftime lead that Harvard could not make up.

Despite the 18-point difference on the scoreboard when the final buzzer sounded, the Crimson hung with the Hoyas throughout most of the first half.

A 6-0 Harvard run fueled by full-court layups from Lin and sophomore point guard Oliver McNally knotted the score at 33 with only 3:31 remaining in the first half.

But those three minutes were enough for the Hoyas to put the game out of reach.

Georgetown responded with an 11-0 run to close out the first frame and the Big East squad entered the locker room with a 44-33 lead.

“That was all the difference in the game,” Hoyas coach John Thompson III said. “It was just the effort right there at that end that got us on that run and put us over the hump.”

Things began to fall apart for the Crimson following McNally’s coast-to-coast basket that tied the score. Guard Jason Clark, the Hoyas’ leader in three-pointers made, got the run started with a jumper from beyond the arc.

6’11 center Greg Monroe, a projected lottery pick in this season’s NBA draft, ripped the ball away from freshman Dee Giger on the Crimson’s following possession and followed with a lay-in off an offensive rebound to increase his team’s lead to five.