“I think it’s a team on a mission this year,” said junior Kyle Casey, who led Harvard with 20 points and eight rebounds in Saturday’s 68-59 win at Brown. “Last year, we got down early, and being a veteran team, we learned from those experiences and tried to nip them in the bud.”

Last year’s trip to Providence and New Haven wasn’t so good for the Crimson. First, they didn’t play well but pulled out a win at Brown after being down by 11 at halftime. A night later, they went to New Haven and lost to Yale in overtime. Had they won that game and every other one turned out the same, the Crimson would have been dancing with an outright Ivy League title. (Interestingly, Brown’s gym was home to the other loss by the team that tied the Crimson, as the Bears knocked off Princeton at home.)

This time around, it was different. A more mature and battle-tested Crimson team won these two games convincingly. It’s undoubtedly a sign of maturity for what is a veteran team, but head coach Tommy Amaker also noted that it comes at a different point in the season, and this time it might have been advantageous.

“This is the beginning of our conference race, so there’s a lot of excitement and energy with everyone right now,” said Amaker.

On Friday night, the Crimson simply shut down Yale in their biggest win ever against the Bulldogs. They held Yale below 32 percent from the field and forced 22 turnovers, which they turned into 26 points. They kept it up the entire game, turning an 11-point halftime lead into the final 30-point victory margin with a strong second half where they outscored the Bulldogs 35-16.

Saturday night’s win over Brown will go into the book as a nine-point win. Don’t let that fool you; Harvard was in control throughout the second half after scoring the first 11 points to turn a 31-27 halftime lead into a 42-27 advantage. While Brown had some good spurts, you never had the feeling they were truly within striking distance, perhaps one play away from going on a run to make it a close game. Harvard never relaxed, aided by some good bench play (freshman Steve Moundou-Missi, in particular, had a solid weekend), and kept Brown at arm’s length as a result. They held the Bears to 37 percent shooting on the night.

Harvard’s 4-0 start in league play includes a 3-0 mark on the road. They will be playing from being ahead, which can never be underestimated in this league, and they now get to go home for a weekend. The Crimson have been excellent at protecting their home floor, so it would not be a surprise if they are 6-0 a week from now. They look like a team on a mission, and one part of that has been fulfilled.

The Crimson didn’t start slowly, but Dartmouth was able to hang around and then took a seven-point lead early in the second half as they won the first four minutes coming out of the locker room. With the Big Green still up by six, Harvard went on a 16-2 run to take over the game, and offensively-challenged Dartmouth never seriously challenged them the rest of the game.

While head coach Tommy Amaker chalks some of it up to league play, where teams know each other better, one has to wonder if there is something different going on.

“Whatever league you’re in, it’s going to feel a little different,” said Amaker. “Conference play is always a bear, and our league is no different.”

It does say something about the Crimson that even while not playing well, they not only have won four of five but they have done that by comfortable margins in all but one. Only last Saturday’s win over Saint Joseph’s came by single digits (74-69). But the margins are deceptive, and say as much about the opponents as they do about Harvard. Those last five games have come against a Florida Atlantic team that isn’t what they were a year ago, a very young Boston College team, a good Saint Joseph’s team, a mediocre Fordham team and a Dartmouth team whose most talented players are freshmen.

This caught up to them against Fordham earlier in the week, a game that was on the road. The Crimson’s leader, Oliver McNally, minced no words about it at halftime of Saturday’s game and in talking after the game.

“He was being very adamant about what we needed to do and how we were going to do it, who needed to step forward,” Amaker said of McNally, who led the Crimson with 17 points and four assists, with no turnovers.

McNally understood that what was dogging the team wasn’t a talent or effort issue. It was all about the intangibles, as he sensed his teammates putting too much pressure on themselves and the play reflecting it. The Crimson had good practices leading up to Saturday’s game, but couldn’t put a complete game together although what they did was enough to win the game.

“We’re a real veteran team,” said the senior guard. “All the juniors have played a lot of minutes, the seniors have played a lot of minutes, and it’s about getting through all the dumb stuff. We were turning the ball over, giving up offensive rebounds, and really not focusing in.

“If we take care of rebounding the basketball, take care of the ball, we’re going to win a lot of games.”

Against Florida Atlantic, the Crimson had problems with turnovers at the beginning of each half. Then they cut down on turnovers in the latter part of each half, and when they did that they gained the advantage. Against Boston College, they ran into an upstart that defended them well and executed well on offense early on, before they clamped down with their trademark defense. In the Saint Joseph’s game, the offense kept them in it until they wore down the Hawks. And against Dartmouth, offensive rebounds were the issue, as the Big Green had eight in the first half (the Crimson had nine defensive boards) but none in the second half.

It’s a good sign that the Crimson have been able to fix problems within a game. But this team now has a target on their back, especially as Ivy League play will soon begin in earnest. (The Crimson have two more non-league games, at Monmouth and home against George Washington, before playing only league games.) Every team wants to beat them, and that’s not to be underestimated.

“We talk about it a lot, and it’s something that you can’t talk about enough,” said McNally. “It’s something that you can forget about. If you don’t keep that in the front of your mind, you can sleep on somebody and not give a great effort and get your butt beat, like we did at Fordham.”

One thing that is clear is that while this Harvard team is good, they aren’t perfect. They have continued to win, even when they haven’t played well, and that’s a sign of a team that can go far. But they have been living dangerously of late, and faced a bottom-line consequence once. In league play, they won’t be able to afford that very often.

The Crimson first did the job defensively, limiting the Terriers to just below 31 percent shooting. Brandyn Curry was the first key to that, as he so often is, as the junior point guard never let BU point guard D.J. Irving get going. He didn’t let Irving get driving opportunities, and also read the offense well to steal and deflect passes while off the ball.

“There aren’t a lot of guys that can guard the way Curry can,” said Boston University head coach Joe Jones. “He’s a very good defender, did a very good job on D.J., and he was able to keep him out of the lane.”

In addition, Kyle Casey and Keith Wright played like the dynamic duo they are capable of being inside. Casey had a big second half offensively, but he and Wright combined for 18 rebounds as Harvard had a 39-30 edge on the backboards, rebounding nearly half of their own misses. They dominated the Terriers’ inside players, although Patrick Hazel nearly had a double-double.

The win over BU showed how deep the Crimson are. Wright and Casey are the guys known to be all-league candidates, and Curry has long been a key as the point guard and for his defense. Against the Terriers, the wing was a big source of offense from long range, as first Christian Webster and then Laurent Rivard had big games for the Crimson.

Webster started last season playing very well and was a big part of the Crimson’s season. While he has still started every game thus far this season, his minutes are down and so are his shooting numbers to this point. He’s basically been in a reduced role and did not score in double figures in a game until they played Boston University. There, he wasn’t in such a role at all, as he scored 14 points on 6-10 shooting, doing much of that damage in the first half as he was 5-8 from the field and the best player on the floor.

Rivard, for his part, looks more and more like the classic “instant offense” player off the bench. He certainly provided that against the Terriers, going 6-7 from long range in 27 minutes off the bench. The team’s third-leading scorer made sure they didn’t miss a beat when Webster went out or when they were on the floor together. With post threats like Wright and Casey, it’s clear Rivard understands how to benefit from them as he has been able to get his share of open looks.

The Crimson have gone from being the hunter to the hunted. In the past, they and everyone else in the Ivy League have had to chase Penn and Princeton, and more recently Cornell. With their success last season and the returning players this time, along with their non-league success, the Crimson will enter Ivy League play as the clear team to beat. In addition, this team will be favored to win every game left on the schedule except possibly their road date with Princeton.

Head coach Tommy Amaker said he has talked with his team about how this changes things, and the early returns indicate they have at least a basic understanding of it.

“We’re going to have to get accustomed to how hard people are going to come after us every night,” Amaker said. “If we aren’t having that kind of energy and effort and intensity about us, it’s going to be tough for us, no matter who we play. We’ve become a target for many folks now, which is what we want. It’s a compliment to us, but we have to know how much work we have to put in to face those kinds of opponents night in and night out.”

A complete effort like the thorough domination of the Terriers is indicative of the Crimson understanding where they are now. The next test comes on Thursday after a long break for final exams, when Florida Atlantic comes to town in a homecoming for head coach Mike Jarvis. Not only is there that angle, as well as the angle of Jarvis having been interested in the job when Amaker got it, but his team will have something to prove as they won their division in the Sun Belt Conference last year but have yet to get untracked thus far this season.

Harvard is happy to remain in the rankings, but their attitude is that the rankings don’t matter. They understand that it’s nice from a program marketing standpoint, but doesn’t drive what they do. After their first loss, the Crimson responded the way a good team would, as they showed why they have ascended to the rankings and to being talked about as one of the best mid-majors this season.

College sports have had a rough run in recent months. Throughout the summer, fans had to try to figure out which conference their favorite team would be playing in when all the moving and shaking subsides. The motivation for conference realignment is all about the dollar bills, often at the expense of any sport not named football — and with little consideration for rivalries that make sports thrilling to watch and play.

But conference realignment was utterly benign compared to the chaos that erupted in State College, Pa., when one of the NCAA’s premier football programs crumbled under the weight of allegation after allegation of sexual misconduct by Jerry Sandusky, a former coordinator. Exacerbating the situation, coach Joe Paterno and Penn State officials appear to have covered up the activities, and it cost one of college football’s legends his job.

Then scandal crept into college hoops, at another sacred program. Coach Jim Boeheim has built Syracuse into a top program, and he relied on his top assistant, Bernie Fine, to help get the Orange there. But allegations of sexual abuse have surrounded Fine, and university officials fired him. Syracuse has received plenty of criticism for possibly failing to do enough to report the rumors of the abuse to police nearly 10 years ago, and Boeheim passionately defended his friend and assistant when ESPN first reported the allegations. He has had to backtrack from those statements, and some experts are calling for his ouster.

Yuck.

With such greed and alleged corruption percolating in college sports, it’d be easy to become disillusioned.

But resist the urge. Or to put it another way: “Don’t ever give up.”

Former NC State coach Jim Valvano made that phrase the motto of the foundation named for him after he died of cancer in 1993. Since his death, ESPN has partnered with the Jimmy V Foundation to raise funds for cancer research. The money goes directly to research, and it goes to a broad range of medical experts toiling to find a cure, not just for popular causes such as breast or prostate cancer but also rarer cancers that have a far worse death rate.

The annual Jimmy V Classic serves as a forum for ESPN to reach a national audience to urge donations, in addition to showcasing a few of the country’s best teams. If that’s not a great role for sports in U.S. society, I don’t know what is.

We go coast to coast with other news from the college basketball nation

Utah doesn’t have a Division I win yet on the season, and the Utes could struggle some more to pick that up after indefinitely suspending Josh Watkins, according to the Associated Press. Watkins has been Utah’s best player by far, averaging 17.7 ppg and 4.9 apg.

Things aren’t much better for one of the Utes’ biggest rivals, the Utah State Aggies. Diamond Leung, of ESPN.com’s “College Basketball Nation” blog, writes that Brady Jardine could be out all season after injuring his foot Nov. 19 in the team’s win against Southern Utah. Jardine is one of the team’s top rebounders, averaging 7.7 rpg.

West Virginia v. the Big East continues to froth in the legal system, with the Big East’s lawyers moving for a dismissal of West Virginia’s lawsuit attempting to get the Mountaineers out of the conference and into the Big 12 ahead of the Big East’s mandatory 27-month waiting period, according to the Associated Press’ Vicki Smith.

We don’t place a ton of stock in the polls in general, but Harvard’s arrival this week is newsworthy. As CBS Sports.com reports, it’s the first time that the Crimson have ever appeared in the top 25, and they are the first Ivy League team to reach the polls since Princeton in 1998.

Games to watch Tuesday

• Missouri vs. Villanova, 7 pm EST (Jimmy V Classic)
• George Mason at Virginia, 7 pm EST
• Kent State at James Madison, 7 pm EST
• Robert Morris at Duquesne, 7 pm EST
• Iowa at Northern Iowa, 8 pm EST
• Washington vs. Marquette, 9 pm EST (Jimmy V Classic)
• Long Beach State at Kansas, 9 pm EST
• Memphis at Miami, 9 pm EST

With Brown’s convincing 75-65 win over Princeton, the showdown between Princeton and Harvard on March 5 just got a little bigger. If things hold to form – and the Bears’ win over the Tigers is just the latest example that one should not assume as much – that game will be between two one-loss teams in the league and very likely determine the champion.

Harvard has a half-game lead due to having played more games, but the Crimson and Tigers are even in the all-important loss column. Many have pointed to the March 5 game as having NCAA Tournament implications, and that may well stand up. But assuming as much isn’t a good idea, something both coaches would surely agree on as they try to go one game at a time.

One need only look at the past two weekends for evidence of this. A week earlier, Harvard had their hands full with a Yale team that could have been right in the thick of things with a win in Cambridge, then trailed by 22 at halftime to a Brown team that didn’t have its best player. This past weekend, Brown had that player back, and Peter Sullivan played almost like he hadn’t missed time, especially in Saturday night’s win. They figure to have him when Harvard makes the trip to Providence next Friday.

Brown is showing signs of progress, with Saturday’s win being the latest example. The biggest thing they did was put two halves together, something they didn’t do at Harvard.

“We’ve been getting off to really good starts,” said Sullivan, who scored a game-high 26 points, including going 16-16 from the foul line. “We just haven’t been able to sustain it the whole game. Today we really played a great second half. It got a little close, but we stayed composed and we finished up the game.”

The Bears are the next opponent for the Crimson, and with Sullivan back and the Bears playing the most complete defensive game of the season on Saturday, they don’t figure to be a pushover. Princeton can attest to it. The Crimson then have to go to Yale on the back end, and the Bulldogs are capable of clipping them on their home floor. For the matchup with the Tigers to mean anything, though, they will likely need to take both games, as Princeton returns home to take on rebuilding Cornell and fading Columbia.

Then again, the Tigers didn’t exactly hold up their end of the bargain on Saturday night. The offense gets a lot of mention, and they struggled at that end, but it was at the defensive end that Princeton lost it. Brown shot 56 percent from the field in the first half and just under 49 percent for the game. The Bears didn’t miss a beat when foul trouble forced them to go smaller, as they played Tucker Halpern as their big man. While Halpern didn’t have the easiest time at the defensive end, he was another ball-handler and caused matchup problems en route to handing out seven assists to make the offense go.

“We were struggling to keep guys in front of us, our help defense wasn’t what it needed to be, and we’ve got to own up for that,” Princeton head coach Sydney Johnson said. “We’ve been pretty good defensively for a while now.”

If Harvard and Princeton win out up to the game on March 5, Harvard will have a little more momentum on their side, if nothing else. By then, the Crimson would have an eight-game winning streak, and of course, they would have the game at home. But Princeton won both meetings last season and the earlier meeting this season, which works in their favor.

Most figured that the meeting between Harvard and Princeton on the last weekend of the regular season would be for all the marbles. That is likely to remain the case, although most figured that the end result might be a tie in the loss column. Instead, an outright Ivy title may be on the line, although the Tigers will still have one more game at the Palestra against their arch-rivals. One thing that is for certain is that the game could take on a different meaning after what happened in Providence on Saturday night.

Harvard has plenty of talent, more than enough to win the games they have thus far with Casey, who returned to action just before Thanksgiving, not looking like the player most thought he would be this season. They’ve had to go into their frontcourt depth at times as a result, but with good efforts there and the continuing development of the perimeter players, they have knocked off the likes of Colorado and Boston College. They’ve had stellar point guard play from Brandyn Curry, excellent wing shooting and scoring from Christian Webster and Laurent Rivard, and Keith Wright has finally been healthy all season and is having a terrific season inside. On top of that, they have the ultimate glue guy in Oliver McNally, their emotional leader who is tough, has a tremendous feel for the game and always seems to be in the middle of the team’s winning ways.

“I don’t think this team would be close to as good without Oliver,” said Casey. “He’s our leader on the floor, off the floor, he brings us energy, he’s a fighter. He may not be the most athletic guy, but without Oliver this team is definitely a different team.”

But even though they have plenty of talent and have won when he hasn’t played well, the Crimson need Casey. He’s their most talented and versatile player, the one many figure will win an Ivy League Player of the Year award before his career is over. He’s the player on this team that can be a difference-maker, and he’s a rarity in the Ivy League as an athletic combo forward.

“I think conditioning is the biggest part to the way I play, being active and athletic throughout the whole game,” said Casey. “I’ve been working hard to get back, and conditioning is definition the biggest part.”

When Casey first returned to action in late November, it wasn’t hard to tell he was coming back from an injury. That last for a while, as in his first six games back he scored in double figures just once, averaging just five points and less than four rebounds per game, never playing more than 21 minutes. He fouled out twice in those games. Later, he fouled out in 25 ineffective minutes at Boston College, but they won anyway.

After the Boston College game, the Crimson had a stretch of over three weeks with only one game on each weekend. That meant more consistent practice time, and with that Casey started to get his conditioning back. He could feel it with each practice, and it showed in the games, as he had 13 points and nine rebounds in 27 minutes at Dartmouth and his first double-double of the season with 10 and 15 at George Washington in 39 minutes. He struggled against Dartmouth, but now has put a solid weekend of consecutive games together.

Friday night against Columbia, he had his second double-double with 17 points and 13 rebounds in 32 minutes. With that, he looked more and more like he was close to what many figured he would be this season.

“He was very active and aggressive and did a heck of a job for us on the glass like he was able to at George Washington,” said head coach Tommy Amaker. “I thought his turnaround was just outstanding.”

On Saturday, Casey didn’t quite pick up where he left off the night before in what would be a real test of how much his conditioning is back. He had just one rebound in the first half, and Amaker said they challenged him at halftime to be better in the second half. Casey grabbed eight rebounds in the second frame to go along with 14 points, finishing with a near double-double of 16 points and nine rebounds on the night.

Besides that, he was the kind of active player he usually is, and was very aggressive at the offensive end as he tried to finish assertively. He combined with Wright to take over the game and break it open, as they combined for 25 of Harvard’s 37 second-half points. (The total was one less than the 26 Cornell scored in the latter frame.)

Harvard heads into a critical road trip at Princeton and Penn at 4-0 in the Ivy League. More importantly, their most talented player looks like he is who they thought he would be, even if he took a little time to get there. It’s come at a good time.

With Ivy League play coming up, the Crimson are 10-3 with wins over Colorado and Boston College. Colorado looks like they will be around the bottom of the Big 12, but the Crimson dominated them. Boston College could finish in the top four in the ACC. The Crimson have done this with Kyle Casey, who received a number of preseason accolades, not playing well after a broken foot kept him out of preseason practice and early games.

The Crimson shortened the bench for this game, in part because the Eagles didn’t go big for a lot of the game. As such, Harvard played just seven players, but Andrew Van Nest played just four minutes. They got plenty out of the ones who played, as five scored in double figures, three of them underclassmen.

The best of them was freshman Laurent Rivard, the reigning Ivy League Rookie of the Week. Rivard scored a career-high 23 points on a variety of jumpers and drives, continuing his excellent shooting. It’s easy to forget that he began his career going 0-11 against George Mason. Since that game, he is shooting over 45 percent from the field and nearly 40 percent from long range.

“I was a little disappointed, my confidence went down a little bit, but the coaches kept their confidence in me and that really helped me,” Rivard said of his first college game. “Their confidence in me built my confidence back up, and my teammates did as well.”

To a man, his teammates speak of his work ethic. Keith Wright, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, said the night after his debut, Rivard was in the gym shooting until 2 in the morning. They rave about the hours he puts in, and he’s seeing that start to pay off.

Rivard and Christian Webster combine to make this team deadly on the wing. Webster was white-hot early in the season, and while he hasn’t kept that pace up, he’s not exactly tailing off. He had 13 points on 3-5 shooting on Wednesday, but he got his baskets at crucial junctures and got to the foul line as well, something the Crimson as a team did very well as they were 23-24 from the line.

“He didn’t take a lot of shots, but he helped the team in so many different aspects,” Rivard said of Webster.

The Crimson’s perimeter unit has been excellent, and they all have clear identities. Brandyn Curry makes the team go from the point, while Oliver McNally is the emotional leader and constantly picks his spots well to score or find a teammate. Webster and Rivard are more shooters than scorers, but are showing they can score off the bounce as well.

Just after Christmas, Harvard had to rally against Monmouth to pull out a win at home. On Wednesday, Boston College played well early and had the Crimson playing from behind once again. Harvard then toughened up the defense, and by the second half the Eagles were playing out of character. Boston College has won largely by being efficient and poised offensively, showing great shot selection. But Harvard took them right out of that. The Crimson didn’t change the game plan, they just stayed the course and got tougher.

“I thought we were maybe on our heels a little bit, maybe a little shell-shocked that they jumped out on us,” head coach Tommy Amaker said. “I thought we locked in a little better, and that really helped our confidence.”

Added McNally: “There was no change, but we needed to do what Coach tells us to, because he puts us in a good position to win the game.”

Harvard still has one more non-league game coming up with a trip to George Washington a week from Saturday. Their Ivy League slate opens with Saturday’s trip to Dartmouth, who they will see again two weeks later. They will play just three games between now and the first full Ivy weekend at the end of the month, which means they will have more practice time.

The Crimson are playing well without getting much from Casey, who fouled out with five points in 25 minutes on Wednesday. Amaker said conditioning is probably the big thing holding him back, especially because Casey is athletic and a live body. McNally thinks the practice time he will soon get is just what the doctor ordered.

“This is a great time, and I think he’s going to really take off over the next couple of weeks because of all the practice that we’ll have,” said the junior guard. “Some guys dread it – we don’t have many games, we have no class and we’re going to be in the gym for a while, but I think it’s going to be great for our team to sharpen up our offensive and defensive schemes. It’s especially so for Kyle, to get him back to where he was.”

As well as the Crimson are playing now, one can only imagine how good they can be if Casey is more like himself. They already have something good going, and their win over Boston College is just more evidence of that. It’s time the conversation shifted to how good Harvard is right now instead of making Boston College the center of it.

But that’s just not the case here. The better team won, and they expected to win.

The home game is the first noteworthy item. Home teams usually win, especially when it’s a good team as Harvard is. The Crimson went 11-2 at home last season, including 6-0 in non-league games, and have established at least one thing about playing in Lavietes Pavilion.

“We expect to win every game here at home,” said junior Keith Wright. “This is our home court, so we want to protect it.”

The Crimson said they expected to win this game, even with star forward Kyle Casey clearly at less than 100 percent coming off a broken foot injury. Casey played 13 minutes, scoring one point and grabbing three rebounds before fouling out. But they didn’t need him in this one.

It helps that Colorado is not very good. The Buffaloes didn’t appear to run much of an offense, especially in the first half as there was mostly one-on-one play. To be fair, they are adjusting to a new head coach and have had an already-thin frontcourt hurt more by a torn ACL suffered by Shane Harris-Turks early in practice that will force him to redshirt this season. But that all added up to one more reason Harvard should have won this game, and did in fairly dominating fashion.

The Crimson are getting plenty of production from several players, perhaps none more so than Wright. The junior post player is scoring most of the time he puts the ball up, shooting nearly 74 percent from the field on the season after going 8-11 against the Buffaloes for 19 points. He added nine rebounds and six assists, and did it at a good time as a handful of NBA scouts were in the building.

“He’s just been a stellar performer for us this whole season thus far,” head coach Tommy Amaker said. “He’s anchored the interior for us. When you have an interior post presence that is playing at the level where he is right now, being very productive and efficient, it allows our perimeter players to have the freedom to drive, to penetrate and dish, and sometimes those shots don’t have as much pressure on them because we have the ability to have a big guy inside that can cause people to collapse.”

One player who has certainly benefited is sophomore Christian Webster. The Ivy League Player of the Week last week is actually the team’s leading scorer, and he went for 20 more against Colorado. He has more of a green light this season and is taking full advantage of it, and Wright’s play inside is helping to open up the perimeter. Even when he struggled from the field against Bryant, he came through with the winning shot in the final minute, so it’s clear confidence is not an issue, which his teammates have noticed.

“His confidence is through the roof right now, and it should be,” said point guard Brandyn Curry. “Even when he’s missing shots, he shouldn’t turn down an open look. He’s one of the best shooters I’ve ever seen. We tell him all the time, if you have an open look, take it.”

For his part, Curry has teamed with Oliver McNally to form a solid backcourt combination. McNally went for 17 points against Colorado, making all three of his shots from deep. The two combined for 13 assists and five turnovers and set a tone as the Crimson had 22 assists on 25 made field goals.

The Crimson kept their foot on the gas pedal in the second half, shooting 60 percent from the field to make it a double-digit ballgame. They led by double digits for all but the first 15 seconds of the second half, as an early three by McNally put them up by 12. Although star guards Alec Burks and Cory Higgins combined for 41 points for the Buffaloes, it was a deceiving total as they didn’t dominate the game by a long shot.

The Crimson were the better team on Sunday by a good margin, so the victory shouldn’t be a surprise. The only thing that might be surprising is how convincing it was, especially with their best player not giving them much as he returns from an injury.

• Steve Donahue is throwing his freshmen right into the mix at Boston College, and it’s helping in the immediate. In particular, Danny Rubin started against Holy Cross and had 14 points and six rebounds, going 4-9 from long range and making a couple of key shots during a run where the Eagles first broke the game open.
• Prior to making the key three-pointer that ultimately sank Bryant, Harvard sophomore Christian Webster was just 2-9 from the field on the day. But he made the shot when it counted, and although it wasn’t a big game after he had a career-high 29 points in their prior game, it didn’t surprise the coach.”He’s a very confident player right now, even though he didn’t shoot it particularly well overall,” said Tommy Amaker. “I think having that moment, and the way he’s played recently and coming off the Mercer game, I didn’t doubt for one second that he had a great shot at burying that shot, and he did.”
• Bryant figured to be more talented this year with Frankie Dobbs now eligible, and Alex Francis has already made an impact that has led to back-to-back NEC Rookie of the Week honors. Add in the return of senior Cecil Gresham, who hit a big three-pointer that put them up by four on Wednesday, and it’s clearly a new team. Now they have to finish games, which they did against Iona but didn’t against Army and Harvard.”We’re more talented, I thought Corey Maynard played well,” said head coach Tim O’Shea, referring to the talented freshman from Australia. “I think we have to find a way to get over the hump.”
• Drexel started the season with three straight on the road and went 2-1, with the loss coming Wednesday night at Rhode Island. Head coach Bruiser Flint took note of the team’s 11-24 showing at the free throw line, which compounded another problem that has cropped up with his team’s offense in past years.”We started getting into too much of a quicker pace, and then we started rushing,” Flint said, noting that Rhode Island started dictating the pace later. “Even the shots, when we were open, we were rushing to shoot them.”
• Rhode Island senior Delroy James is a fine example of a player who has steadily improved over his career to approach the potential he showed before college. Every year, you could see the strides he has made, and now he’s grown into the best player on his team. James had 33 points on Wednesday, one off his career high, and did it on 11-18 shooting.
• After missing all of last season, Central Connecticut State junior Ken Horton has come back with a vengeance. Against Army, he scored a career-high 34 points, and thus far is averaging 21.3 points and 9 rebounds per game.
• Andy Toole has Robert Morris picking up right where they left off at the defensive end. That was an area of emphasis for Mike Rice, and thus far the Colonials are keeping it up as they have yet to allow an opponent to score 65 points. In yielding 155 points in their first three games, they have posted the lowest three-game opponent total to start a year in NEC history against only Division I competition.

The Crimson primarily won this game on defense, as Holy Cross’ 49 points might imply. More numbers show it as well, such as the Crusaders shooting below 40 percent from the field and committing 15 turnovers with just eight assists. However, that wasn’t all, and the primary numbers obscure how they did it. First and foremost, the Crimson’s transition defense was excellent all night long, rarely letting Holy Cross get a fast break chance.

At the offensive end, the Crimson did it inside and outside. Inside, the damage was done primarily by Keith Wright, who had 18 points on 6-8 shooting, with most of the damage coming in the second half after foul trouble limited him in the first half. When he went out, freshman Ugo Okam had some good minutes as he scored six points by making all three of his shots and added three blocks. Okam is raw, but has a good motor and a decent feel for the game, and with both he has a chance to develop into a nice player.

“He goes hard every day,” said sophomore guard Brandyn Curry. “Ugo’s done a great job coming in, learning all the sets and just doing what we ask of him. We tell him to go after every shot, he’s a tremendous shot-blocker.”

The Crimson are a little thin up front, so if Okam can give them good minutes while Kyle Casey rehabs from a broken foot, they should be in good shape later in the season. With Casey out, they have pressed sophomore Jeff Georgatos into starting duty after being a bit player last season. Georgatos has had some good moments thus far and certainly has been serviceable, but they will be better when they can have him come off the bench again.

Curry provided much of the production from the outside, though he was hardly alone. He had 10 points, 12 assists, a team-high seven rebounds and five steals, a stat line that stood out. Still, his stats only told part of the story.

“I’m looking at his line right now, and it’s just phenomenal,” said head coach Tommy Amaker. “He led us in rebounds, led us in assists, led us in steals, double-digit scorer. That’s an incredible stat line for a point guard.”

Besides his stats, Curry was the catalyst with his play at the top of the defense. He insists on guarding the opposing point guard to try to make life difficult for the other team, and that’s something he certainly did in this game as neither of Holy Cross’ point guards were very effective.

“I thought we were energized and excited, and it started a lot with Brandyn Curry,” added Amaker. “I thought his pressure on the ball setting the tone out front for our defense really lifted out ball club. I thought he was the catalyst for us.”

Curry had good help from Christian Webster (12 points) and Oliver McNally (10 points, five assists). McNally helps Curry with the point guard duties, an important spot for any team but perhaps more so for this team given that the Crimson lost a special player in Jeremy Lin from last season’s team. While none of them is Lin and no one player is expected to replace his production, if Curry plays like he did Tuesday as well as the latter part of last season, it will go a long way toward making up the lost production.

“What Brandyn does that Jeremy Lin did so well for us last year is he makes a lot of plays,” said McNally. “When things break down, you’re going to need a playmaker, and that’s what Brandyn does really well for us.”

For his part, Amaker wants Curry to stay in character and not try to be what he isn’t. Basically, he wants him to do what he did on Tuesday since that’s basically the role they have designated, which means he defends and makes plays for teammates. That shouldn’t prove to be a challenging task since it’s a lot of what he’s done as a college player.

Curry was a big part of why the Crimson ran away from Holy Cross. The Crimson did it first with their defense, and the offense followed as they built up large leads. They led by at least 20 points for all but the first minute of the second half, and the game didn’t seem as close as the final margin showed.