Would there be anything—and I mean ANYTHING—in the world that would make the Cornell Basketball Blog happier than the Big Red ending the Crimson season by winning this one? Save for the Knicks signing Jeff Foote and then trading Jeremy Lin to Morgan Stanley for Ryan Wittman, I don’t think so.

This game will be tough; traveling to Ithaca for Saturday contests always is. Add in the fact that it’s the Senior Night of Chris Wroblewski and Andrew Ferry (who, after going to the Sweet 16 as sophomores, won’t want to end their careers with a loss), the fact that the game is on ESPN3 (Harvard is 2-7 over the past two years on ESPN affiliates), and the fact that the Big Red has topped Yale and Princeton at home, and I am sufficiently terrified.

Because quite honestly, the Crimson looks lost offensively right now. This just doesn’t feel like the same Harvard squad which you knew last season would reliably hit its threes at home and which would come back against an inferior team no matter how much it was down by. And it isn't.

The defense has kept the ship afloat all year, but—despite the fact that it brought everyone back from 2011’s team and added to them a talented group of freshmen—the offense has struggled to find any sort of flow all season long. Last year, the Crimson scored at least 68 points in 11 of its 14 Ivy games. In 2012, it has hit that mark just three times, with a high of just 71.

Nobody has emerged that the team can rely on to score in a tight game down the stretch. That could not have been more evident this weekend, when Rosen took over for the Quakers while the Crimson was left with last year’s Player of the Year—Keith Wright—sitting on the bench and a freshman, Corbin Miller, taking the biggest shot of the season.

It has gotten to the point where, during the timeout before Casey’s charge Saturday, I turned to my co-beat writer, Martin Kessler, and asked what he would call. Neither of us had an answer. Instead, we both had a sinking feeling that “Oh crap, now they have to score.”

If the Crimson is going to win this weekend, somebody needs to step up and knock down shots. If Laurent Rivard, Oliver McNally, and Corbin Miller combine to go 2-for-9 again from deep and Wright doesn’t reestablish himself as a dominant force inside, Harvard could be in trouble.

But this is a veteran squad fully aware of the magnanimity of the situation, and I imagine it will find a way to win. A loss here would be a bigger stomach-punch than that thrown by Nicholas Cage during his future guest appearance on “Gabotage.”

Pick: Harvard 65, Cornell 59

DARTMOUTH AT COLUMBIA

No one cares, moving on.

Pick: Columbia 59, Dartmouth 53

BROWN AT PRINCETON

I’ve made fun of Brown a lot this year, and deservedly so—the Bears have been awful.

That being said, Brown is going to be a major threat to win the league next year. Seriously. With Harvard losing Wright (not to mention Miller and McNally), Yale losing Mangano, Princeton losing Doug Davis, and Penn losing Rosen and Bernardini, things should open up a bit next season.