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Harvard 86, Northeastern 80

Harvard goes to great lengths to deny Northeastern

Northeastern's Anthony Green (top) was outnumbered three to one by Harvard players (from left ) Siyani Chambers, Corey Johnson, and Zena Edosomwan as they scrambled for a loose ball in the first half.Jim Davis/Globe Staff
Harvard86
Northeastern80

The lumps that Harvard’s men’s basketball team took early in the season made it clear that wins weren’t going to be handed to the Crimson.

Having a top-25 recruiting class, All-Ivy big man Zena Edosomwan, and now-healthy floor leader Siyani Chambers didn’t mean they could assume victories would come.

They’d have to learn to play with leads, stop runs, hold teams off, and close out games.

They had to check off every item on that list Tuesday to come away with a 86-80 victory over Northeastern at Lavietes Pavillion.

After building a lead as large 20-points, the Crimson (3-4) had to hold off a charge by the Huskies (4-5) to put together back-to-back wins for the first time this season.

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“It’s something every year that we’ve kind of got to work on,” Chambers said. “We try to avoid those little lulls in our energy and our effort and stuff to allow them to come back. Unfortunately tonight, they played really hard. Can’t discredit what they did tonight. They got down and they didn’t just give up, they fought back and made it a good game.”

The Crimson came out scorching in the first half, barely bothering to spend much time inside the 3-point line, going 8 for 15 from deep. For the game, they shot 14 for 27 from beyond the arc (one shy of the most made 3s since Tommy Amaker become coach in 2007) with just 18 paint points.

Seth Towns finished the night with a team-high 24 points on 7-of-15 shooting (3 of 5 from beyond the arc). Corey Johnson did all of his damage from long range, going 7 of 10 for 21 points. Chambers sprayed 11 assists to go with 13 points. Edosomwan put up his first double-double of the season with 13 points and 13 rebounds.

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The Huskies, who shot 0 for 10 from 3 in the first half, found themselves trading twos for threes — and not making nearly enough of the former.

The Crimson held Northeastern to 27.8 percent shooting from the floor (10 for 36) and the Huskies went into the locker room down, 40-27.

By 12:40 in the second half, when Crimson forward Chris Lewis swatted Huskies forward Alex Murphy’s layup at the rim then raced the other way for an offensive rebound and a putback, Northeastern was in 61–41 hole.

But they spent the rest of the half clawing out of it. The visitors cut the lead to 4 with 2:51 left, getting back into the game by getting to the free throw line.

The Huskies shot 24 of 34 from the foul line with T.J. Williams (20 points) leading the parade to the stripe, knocking down 9 of 13 free throws.

“You look at our shooting percentage from 3, that’s a tremendous percentage from 3,” Amaker said. “If you shoot that well from the 3-point line, you would think we would maybe fair a little better . . . but they attacked us and that’s what they do and they did it very well and that’s a great way of getting back into a ball game. When you’re down by a lot, the best way is to utilize the foul line.”

Even though the Huskies’ Jeremy Miller scored a game-high 26 points, Northeastern didn’t have enough firepower to get out of the hole. Murphy (14 points) missed eight of his 13 shots and the Huskies got just five points from its the bench.

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Crimson guard Corbin Miller drilled a deep 3 from in front of the Crimson bench, off a feed from Bryce Aiken with 1:43 left to put the Crimson up 79-72 and ostensibly ice the game.

“It’s good for us to get a win, but we learned a lot,” Chambers said. “We went through the ebbs and flows and did a lot of things today in order to win and that only helps our young guys mature a little bit. But going into the next game [Wednesday at Boston College], we’ve got to take this as a learning experience and try not to make those same mistakes where we give up a 20-point lead.

“But on the other end of it, we were really happy we were able to pull it out.”


Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @julianbenbow.