“[Defending Yale’s guards] is going to be a team effort, but I also think Brandyn and I have to take pride in that they’re both good players,” McNally said. “We just have to really buckle down and stay in front of the ball and make them take tough shots.”
Like the Bulldogs, Brown has multiple players who can score, starting with freshman Sean McGonagill, who is having an impressive rookie year. The point guard wowed the league when he scored 39 points on 15-of-19 shooting in Brown’s win versus Columbia last weekend, which earned him both Ivy League Player of the Week and Rookie of the Year honors.
“That was crazy,” McNally said. “We all saw that box score. Someone who can do that–we know that’s someone we’ve got to keep a watchful eye on.”
McGonagill averages 11.7 points, to go with 5.1 assists and 4 rebounds on the season. He will be one of two Rookie of the Year candidates playing tomorrow night, along with Harvard’s Laurent Rivard, who averages 11.5 points and leads the conference in free-throw percentage.
The Bears leading scorer is senior captain Peter Sullivan, who averages 13.1 points per contest. Forward Tucker Halperin contributes 11.8 points, providing another tough matchup for the Harvard front-court of Wright and Casey, who both struggled with foul trouble last weekend versus Princeton. Senior guard Garrett Leffelman chips in 9.4 points per game after averaging 17.5 against Harvard last year.
Brown’s struggles have thus not been offensive but rather defensive. The Bears rank last in the conference in scoring defense, allowing 72.6 points per contest, and have the worst turnover margin in the Ivy.
Casey said the key to being Brown might therefore be making use of Harvard’s speed.
“We’ve just got to play as fast and as under control as we can,” the sophomore said. “We’re just going to try to play our pace...and try to speed them up.”
Harvard swept the pair twice last year. The best game of the quartet was an 82-79 overtime victory at Yale, a win in which four freshmen, led by Casey, carried the team after McNally and Jeremy Lin ’10 fouled out in regulation. The team then swept Yale and Brown by an average of 20 points at home, a feat it knows it will be hard-pressed to duplicate this weekend.
“They both pose different kinds of styles,” McNally said. “Taking both of these will definitely be a battle.”
—Staff writer Scott A. Sherman can be reached at ssherman13@college.harvard.edu.