Early in the year, for instance, Harvard turned the ball over 24 times and lost to a pressing Holy Cross squad. Still, Amaker said, he’d be glad to see Cornell stretch its defense and get aggressive.

“For a [Harvard] team that has struggled to score a little bit,” he said, breaking the press can lead to easy buckets.

Instead, one of Amaker’s biggest concerns is that his team isn’t worrying enough.

After the team’s loss to Dartmouth, the seniors rallied the group, the Crimson showed its toughness, and the players ran off four straight road victories.

Now they return home and find themselves fully healthy for the first time all year. That might seem like a good position to be in, but for a basketball coach, it’s just the cause of another worry.

“One of my biggest fears it that because we are coming home after being on the road for two weekends, are you ready to ‘phew?’—to have that kind of attitude and think because you’re home it’s supposed to happen for you,” Amaker said. “That’s not the way it works.”

—Staff writer Jacob D. H. Feldman at jacob.feldman@thecrimson.com.