Such offensive efficiency began on the very first possession, as just 14 seconds after the opening tip, Casey slammed home a cross-court alley-oop pass from Saunders. Bryant proceeded to tie the score on the next possession, following a give-and-go between Francis and Maynard that led the latter to lay the ball in at the 19:22 mark.

The back-and-forth scoring would continue until several strong put-backs from Moundou-Missi enabled the Crimson to stretch its lead to as many as 12 in the opening period.

With an assortment of mismatches and the lead hovering around 10 for much of the game, the Harvard bench did not see as many minutes as it had of late.

“They’re not a very big team, so that limited us in terms of the amount of bigs that we could rotate through,” Amaker said. “[Additionally,] we never [felt] comfortable about where we were in terms of the lead. We never could feel that we had things stretched out…[to the point] where we could go to our bench.”

Wednesday’s contest marked the last time the Crimson plays at Lavietes for over a month, with the team traveling to Colorado and the Great Alaska Shootout next week.

“This was a big game for us,” Saunders said. “We wanted to start off our road trip on a good note…We came out with energy and [Bryant’s] crowd came out, which got us extra pumped up. It was intense for us playing against such…a great team.”

—Staff writer Juliet Spies-Gans can be reached at juliet.spies-gans@thecrimson.com.