“I think a lot of different individual players stepped up with big plays,” Rutzen said. “[Berry] really handled the pressure with ball-handling, Clark had some really big shots, and the forwards had a lot of big rebounds, but there wasn’t one specific play. It was just a matter of consistency and making sure we finished our shots and finished our rebounds.”

Along with its timely free throws, the Crimson defense was an integral part of its success down the stretch. In the last five minutes of the game, Harvard held its opponents to only four points, a statistic that goes against the grain of its recent late-game defensive lapses.

“We definitely have turned our focus to defense in the second half of the season,” Berry said. “We know how important defensive stops are and realized that they aren’t important just for defense, but that our offense also springs from our defense. That’s what we focused on late in this game.”

Neither the Crimson nor Cornell shot the ball well from the field, only managing to put up percentages of only 39 and 38, respectively. Despite its woes, Harvard finished off the game shooting 80 percent from the line.

But for the Crimson, it ultimately all came down to some basic fundamentals.

“Defense and rebounding are going to win games for us,” Rutzen explained. “That has been our mentality all year, and we’re just trying to bring that to fruition every game. In [Friday’s game], that took a little longer than preferred, but we ended up playing good defense and pulling away with it—it was definitely a good win.”

—Staff writer Juliet Spies-Gans can be reached at jspiesgans@college.harvard.edu.