To Open Home Ivy Weekend, Harvard Tops Princeton, 78-69

Friday, February 15

Princeton, N.J.

7:00 PM

Princeton University

12-8, 4-3Ivy

Harvard

12-8, 5-2Ivy

Harvard

Princeton

Richmond Aririguzoh had a double-double with 15 points and 11 boards Friday night.

Photo by: Beverly Schaefer

To Open Home Ivy Weekend, Harvard Tops Princeton, 78-69

February 15, 2019 | Men's Basketball

Box Score

A late run allowed Harvard to pull away from a 59-all tie against the Princeton men's basketball team Friday night in Jadwin Gym and take a 78-69 win to remain in second place in the Ivy League at the midway point.

Yale won to remain atop the league at 6-1 with Harvard and Cornell, also a winner Friday night, second at 5-2. Princeton holds the last Ivy League Tournament spot at 4-3, now with a game's margin over Penn at 3-4. Brown and Dartmouth, which will visit Jadwin Gym Saturday at 7, are next at 2-5.

Princeton led in the first half by as many as seven points at 15-8 more than seven minutes into the game, but Harvard scored seven of the next nine points and later in the half answered a 23-21 Tiger lead with eight straight points to go up six at 29-23 with less than three minutes before the break.

Princeton pulled within two at 33-31 at the half and was up six at 54-48 with less than nine minutes left in the game, but the Crimson turned it around from there. A 20-4 Harvard run flipped a 56-50 Princeton edge into a 10-point Harvard lead at 70-60 with less than four minutes to go, and after that point, Princeton was no closer than six points.

"The game seemed to take a huge swing with about six minutes left in their favor," Mitch Henderson, the Franklin C. Cappon-Edward G. Green '40 head coach of Princeton men's basketball, said. "We had an opportunity to pull away – I think it was 54-50 – and I think we had three or four empty possessions in a row. "

Bryce Aiken led all scorers with 33 points for Harvard, and fellow New Jerseyan Richmond Aririguzoh co-led Princeton with 15 points alongside Devin Cannady. Sebastian Much joined Aririguzoh and Cannady in double figures for Princeton with a season-high 14 points.

"This group, I still feel like, has a lot of really good basketball left and we're still growing, the way the group is coming together. When you have Richmond, that is a major advantage for us. It should give everybody around him confidence. We've got to play with our backs up against the wall tomorrow night," Henderson said. "Our defense has got to carry us. That's where this has got to go. We just made enough mistakes tonight to get hurt."

Small advantages added up for the Crimson, who outshot Princeton from the field 46.4 percent to 43.6 percent, outrebounded the Tigers 36-33, and had 11 turnovers to 13 for Princeton.

Postgame Notes

• Senior Devin Cannady became the fifth Tiger in program history to score 1,500 points, now standing at 1,505. He is 41 back of Kit Mueller '91 (1,546) for fourth place and 45 back of Douglas Davis '12 (1,550), who was in attendance Friday night, for third. Ian Hummer '13 is 120 points ahead of Cannady in second, behind only Bill Bradley '65 (2,503).

• Cannady hit one 3-pointer to lift his career total to 268, now eight back of Davis (276) for second and 13 back of Brian Earl '99 (281) for the program record. The 3-pointer was also his 50^th of the season, making him, Davis and Earl the only Tigers to have four 50 3-pointer seasons.

• Junior Richmond Aririguzoh tied a career-high with 11 rebounds, also a game-high total, two weeks after setting that career best at Columbia. It was his second career double-double along with a 10-point, 10-rebound effort at Maine on Nov. 28, 2018.

• Sophomore Sebastian Much's 14 points were one better than his previous season best of 13 from the win at Arizona State on Dec. 29, 2018. It was the second-highest total of his career, after a 19-point effort at USC on Dec. 19, 2017.

• Senior Myles Stephens added nine points to his career total and remained in 15^th place on the program scoring list at 1,232 points, seven back of Brian Taylor '84 (1,239) for 14^th and nine back of former teammate Spencer Weisz '17 (1,241) for 13^th.