For the fourth-straight year, there was no stopping Harvard on its way to the Big Dance.
Steve Moundou-Missi (6'7''-SF-92)'s jumper from just inside the arc with 7.2 seconds left sent the Crimson to the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship on Saturday at The Palestra with a 53-51 victory over Yale.
Harvard joins Princeton from 1989-92 and Penn from 1970-75 in representing the Ivy League in the NCAA Tournament in four or more consecutive seasons. Dartmouth also went to the NCAA Tournament for four-straight years from 1941-44 before the formation of the league.
Harvard senior guard/forward Wesley Saunders (6'5''-G/F) led all scorers with 22 points, while Ivy League Player of the Year Justin Sears (6'8''-F) led the Bulldogs with 13. Moundou-Missi, with 11 points, and Yale senior guard Javier Duren (6'4''-G), a first-team All-Ivy selections along with Sears and Saunders among those in Saturday's contest, had 12.
The Crimson scored 17 of the second half's first 22 points to come back from a four-point deficit at the break and led from just less than 14 minutes to go until Yale went on a 9-0 run to take the lead at 49-48 with 1:47 left. Freshman guard Makai Mason (6'1''-G) had the go-ahead bucket there for Yale.
The lead went back to Harvard when Saunders followed that with a three-point play before Duren sank two free throws to tie it at 51-51 with 55 seconds to go.
A pivotal call on Harvard's next possession gave the Crimson the ball with the shot clock off, and Moundou-Missi made that possession count. Before the call, Moundou-Missi fired a baseline jumper that missed and went off both Harvard and Yale hands before going out of bounds. Possession to Harvard was the call on the floor, and after a video review, the call stood.
Just as the Crimson were clutch at the end, so they were at the beginning, getting out to an 8-0 lead while the Bulldogs missed their first three shots. Yale soon got going with a 14-3 run that put the Bulldogs ahead 14-11 just past the midway point of the half.
From there, the game was never more than five points apart until Harvard went on a 13-0 early second-half run that turned a 32-27 deficit into a 40-32 Harvard lead, an advantage that Harvard held until Mason's bucket inside of the final two minutes.
Amaker
