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Though it led at halftime, the Harvard men’s basketball team could not hold on Friday night, falling to No. 3/2 Oklahoma (11-0) in the final game of the Diamond Head Classic by a score of 83-71.
Looking to spoil the Sooners’ undefeated season, the Crimson (5-7) pulled within five with under four minutes to play, but it was not enough to overcome a 27-4 Oklahoma run that spanned the end of the first half and the first five minutes of the second.
“We’ve got to figure out how we can play four minutes at a time,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said. “We certainly weren’t able to do that here in this championship game here this afternoon.”
Amaker consistently emphasizes the first four minutes of every half to his team, but while the Crimson kept it close during the first four minutes of the first half, the Sooners scored the first 17 points of the second half, forcing Harvard to play catch-up for the rest of the game.
The run happened in the blink of an eye. After going to the locker room down 37-35, the Sooners came out firing in the second half. Just eight seconds into the second frame, senior forward Ryan Spangler knocked down an open three to put Oklahoma up by one. After freshman guard Corey Johnson missed a three, the Sooners got the ball back to Spangler for a second trey.
From there, Oklahoma set the pace of play. While the Crimson had slowed the speed of the game in the first half, the Sooners blew the game open in the second with a flurry of fast break points, culminating in eight straight Buddy Hield points to put the Sooners up, 52-35.
“It was a tough stretch for us right there coming out of halftime,” Amaker said. “We knew transition defense was going to be key, and boy they turned their defense up and really got after us. It was like a jailbreak to the other end of the floor.”
Harvard finally got on the board in the second frame on a dunk from senior forward Evan Cummins with 16:15 remaining in the half, but the damage had been done.
In the process of Oklahoma growing its lead to 15, Johnson also picked up his third and fourth fouls, sending him to the bench early. Without Johnson, who has made the second-most treys of any freshman nationwide, Amaker’s style of playing inside-out and stretching the floor was hindered.
Without Johnson to help spread the floor, junior forward Zena Edosomwan took control. Beginning with a jumper with 12:40 remaining that pushed the score to 62-44, Edosomwan sparked a 12-0 Crimson run that brought his side within single digits. The Los Angeles native had five of the team’s 12 points over the four-minute span.
“I don’t fear anyone—I want to play the game, and I think they should fear me,” Edosomwan said. “I was playing as aggressive as possible within the system and within the team and finding my spots.”
The run, however, was too little too late. A jumper by Edosomwan with 4:28 remaining cut Oklahoma’s lead to five, but that was as close as the Crimson would get. A three-point play by Hield five possessions later stretched the Oklahoma lead to eight and put the game out of reach.
Going into the game, the Crimson’s keys to success were limiting Hield and defending the three-point shot. In the first half, Harvard was largely successful. Senior Agunwa Okolie, the Crimson’s top defender, kept Hield to just 11 points in the opening frame and the Sooners shot just 27 percent from behind the arc. In the second half, however, Hield lit up Okolie and the rest of the Harvard defense for 23 points, finishing the night with a career-high 34. As a team, Oklahoma shot 46 percent from deep in the second frame, including five-of-five in the first five minutes out of the locker room.
During the first two games of the Diamond Head Classic, Okolie was successful in limiting the production of the opponent’s top offensive player—BYU’s Kyle Collinsworth and Auburn’s Kareem Canty. Hield was a different story, burning the Crimson from nearly every spot on the floor, posing a threat to pull up for a shot or drive to the rim on any play. To go along with his sharp shooting in traffic, Hield shot 9-of-10 from the charity stripe. Meanwhile, Hield's partner in the backcourt—junior Jordan Woodard—added 28 points of his own on 9-of-13 shooting.
It was Edosomwan who provided the offensive spark for Harvard. The junior had a career-high 25 points to go along with 16 rebounds in 34 minutes. Edosomwan had his way in the post on offense in the first half, with starting Oklahoma center Khadeem Lattin heading to the bench early with foul trouble.
In the second half, Edosomwan had to work more for his shots. With the Crimson shooting just over 28 percent from three in the second frame, more pressure was placed on Edosomwan, but he continued to perform, with 12 of his 25 points coming in the final 20 minutes.
With the loss, Harvard finishes the tournament 2-1 after victories over BYU and Auburn. The defeat was the Crimson’s first in a mid-season tournament during the Amaker-era, after Harvard won the Battle 4 Atlantis in 2011 and the Great Alaska Shootout in 2013.
“[We] knew we were better than our record, and we are continuing to show we are better than our record,” Edosomwan said. “As we get close to Ivy League play, we played two top-five teams in the country and played our hearts out, and I think we should have all the confidence in the world.”
—Staff writer Theresa C. Hebert can be reached at theresa.hebert@thecrimson.com.
