Junior co-captain Siyani Chambers, pictured above, had 11 points in Harvard's 60-46 win over Northeastern.

With 7:44 to play and his team clinging to a nine-point lead, senior wing Wesley Saunders showed a bit of the reason why he came into Wednesday’s game seventh in the nation in scoring.

After Northeastern’s Reggie Spencer missed a short corner jumper on one end, junior co-captain Siyani Chambers brought the ball up for Harvard, sending it quickly to Saunders, who was waiting, hands up, in the right corner. Saunders put the ball on the floor just once before reaching the paint, at which point he elevated from the right box, floated across the lane, and flicked in the layup before landing on the other side of the key.

The bucket put Saunders’s team up, 49-38, and the Huskies never threatened again. After failing to separate itself for much of the second half, the Crimson outplayed and outlasted Northeastern down the stretch, ultimately pulling out the victory, 60-46, Wednesday night at Lavietes Pavilion.

While the home team eventually broke the game open, Harvard’s play in the minutes immediately proceeding and following intermission wasn’t nearly as smooth as Saunders’s acrobatic layup. After the Crimson (5-1) took a 10-0 lead to start the game, Northeastern (5-2) took advantage of a six-minute Harvard field goal drought to inch back into the contest. Led by senior forward Scott Eatherton, the Huskies made a barrage of layups to close the first period, capitalizing on Harvard’s lack of rhythm on the offensive end to tighten up the game.

The Crimson’s 13-point lead quickly evaporated as the Huskies relied on a surfeit of interior passes and points in the paint to get within five points heading to the locker room at the half.

And when Northeastern guard T. J. Williams knocked down a trey on the first play of the second period, a contest that had seemed to be turning into a blowout just a half hour prior was suddenly a one-possession game.

But then Harvard turned to Saunders, and the senior did what he has been doing all season long: score. Thirty seconds after Williams’s shot from deep, Saunders broke out in transition, and Chambers found him. Saunders drew the foul, and hit both shots from the charity stripe. On the next possession, Saunders slashed to the paint once more and put in the layup.

Back-to-back buckets by senior center Kenyatta Smith and co-captain Steve Moundou-Missi extended Harvard’s lead back to seven before Saunders grabbed a rebound and scored the put-back, giving the Crimson a nine-point advantage and marking his third basket in as many minutes.

"[We] had a sense of urgency to begin the second half,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said. “We talked about [being aggressive] the first four minutes of the second half, and I thought we [did] that which gave us some confidence…which was crucial for us.”

Just as they had done in the first half, however, the Huskies began to chip into the home team’s lead—one post play at a time. Three layups by Northeastern big men Spencer and Eatherton, and a short floater by the former, brought the team within six, 44-38, with 9:24 to play.

But a deep corner jumper from Moundou-Missi and a made free throw from junior wing Agunwa Okolie extended Harvard’s advantage back to nine, setting up Saunders’s floating, up-and-under layup with 7:44 remaining.

From there, the team that was supposed to win did everything it needed to in order to pull out the victory. When the final whistle blew, it was Harvard that came out on top.

“[In the second period], we got up in transition—Siyani was pushing it, and we got ahead before they could set up the defense,” Saunders explained. “So I think we did a better job attacking their defense in that second half.”

While Saunders did not score in the first period, he ended the night with a team-high 12 points, while his five takeaways matched the entire number of steals that the Huskies put up on the night.

"He is a veteran player and a tremendous player,” Amaker said. “We expect him to play [the] way [he did]…. I thought Wesley was good in his attention to detail and his awareness to defend [Northeastern’s Dvavid Walker], who is a tremendous player and a tremendous shooter."