Some quick hitters from the weekend:
- Brown split its two games this weekend, and the biggest development is that Peter Sullivan appears to be fully healthy. The junior wing was injured early in Ivy League play and had struggled playing through it, but had two solid games in a row this weekend. He had a double-double against Dartmouth with 23 points and 11 rebounds, going 14-16 from the foul line, then had 21 points and six boards against Harvard the next night.
- Harvard had its first Ivy League road sweep in 10 years with an 82-79 overtime win at Yale followed by an 81-67 win at Brown on Saturday. Freshmen came up big in both wins, with Christian Webster reaching double figures in both and steadily improving guard Brandyn Curry scoring 15 against Yale. Topping both was Kyle Casey, who had 20 points and seven boards against Yale and then had a terrific night against Brown, scoring 27 points on 8-9 shooting from the field, including 3-3 from long range. That earned him not only the Ivy League Rookie of the Week, his fourth such honor, but also Player of the Week.”I thought Kyle Casey was just spectacular,” said head coach Tommy Amaker. “For a freshman to have the kind of weekend he’s had is pretty darn special for us, and without him I’m not sure that we’re in the position we’re in right now.”
Added teammate Jeremy Lin: “He’s just playing out of his mind right now.”
- Another Ivy note: it’s often said that winning on the road in the league is very difficult, but thus far this season road teams are 16-14.
- Northeastern suffered another heart-breaking loss at William & Mary on Saturday, which makes twice in three trips to Williamsburg that they had such an ending. This time, the Huskies were the ones battling back from a deficit, as they trailed by 16 with over nine minutes left and rallied to take a one-point lead with 23 seconds left before falling 53-52.
- Speaking of road wins, one team that had an adventure on the road this weekend was Belmont, which moved to 16-10 overall and 11-5 in the Atlantic Sun with a 70-57 win at USC Upstate on Saturday. The Bruins spent 20 consecutive hours on the team bus, from 2:30 p.m. Central on Friday until 11:30 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, as Interstate 85 in northeast Georgia was closed due to poor road conditions from the storm that hit the area. The game was slated to tip off at 2 p.m. but was pushed back to 7 p.m. to accommodate the team, and they did not get a shootaround – only a 30-minute pregame warm-up.
- UMass scored a 70-62 win over Saint Joseph’s on Sunday, a good follow-up to their comeback win at Duquesne on Thursday night. Ricky Harris continued his hot play, scoring 27 points, 17 in the second half. In the last six games, he is averaging 26.7 points per game and looks nothing like the player he was nearly two months ago, when shots just weren’t falling.”In the first part of the season, I felt like I was forcing a lot of stuff instead of letting the game come to me,” said the senior guard. “Now I feel more relaxed out there, I feel like the game is coming to me. I’m not having to go do stuff that I’m not capable of doing. It’s just coming to me and I’m feeding off my teammates.”
