After shooting 65 percent from the field, the Crimson headed into halftime with a commanding 22-point lead. But the team remembered the squads’ meeting one month ago, when Penn rallied from 18-down with 15 minutes left in the game to force a double-overtime thriller.

“I heard our kids talking about it at the half,” Amaker said, “which is a really good sign of them thinking the right way to maintain focus for the second half.”

That kind of mental preparedness helped Harvard hold its ground when Penn opened the second half with a 6-0 run.

Curry steadied the ship with a jumper from the top of the key. From there, McNally, Rivard, and sophomore guard Christian Webster hit timely jumpers to help increase the lead to 26 points with 14 minutes left to play in the game. Webster scored 10 of his 14 points in the second half.

Penn would eventually cut into the Crimson’s large lead and close the gap to 15, but the visitors were unable to mount a serious comeback like they did a month ago.

“Penn has stayed hungry and played well when they’ve been down,” Amaker said. “So we knew that just because we were up by a decent margin at the half, that wasn’t going to be the end of the game. We knew we had to play 40 minutes to win this game, and certainly we did that.”