Smith wasn’t the only one who had to play through foul trouble. Sophomore forward Steve Moundou-Missi had two fouls in the first half and fouled out with 20 seconds to play, and sophomore forward Jonah Travis ended the game with four.

Despite the height difference, the 6’8” Smith and the 6’7” Moundou-Missi showed no hesitation driving on the seven-foot Kirk. The two combined for 15 points on six-for-12 shooting in the paint.

Because of the early foul trouble, Amaker was forced to use his three bigs in rotation and put them back into the game with four fouls—balancing maintaining defensive pressure with keeping his players in the game for as long as possible.

“We were juggling a little bit deciding who we wanted on the floor and saving a certain guy here, saved Yat for that, then Steve, then Jonah,” Amaker said. “Our guys performed well, and we had to talk to them about playing as if they didn’t have four fouls. Sometimes when you’re in foul trouble, you play passive. We needed to maintain a certain aggression.”

REIGNING THREES

In his second consecutive tournament, junior co-captain Laurent Rivard made his presence known.

In last season’s loss to Vanderbilt in the second round, Rivard’s clutch three-point shooting down the stretch kept Harvard in contention, as he led the team with 20 points.

But this year, the guard’s heroics paid off for the Crimson. Rivard opened up the first half hot, contributing on both ends and leading the team with nine points and four rebounds—all on defense. With 14 minutes to play, Rivard received a pass from Chambers on the wing and drained his first three of the night from in front of the Lobos bench—breaking Harvard’s single-season record with his 75th trey this year and putting the Crimson up by five.

Rivard benefited from Harvard’s inside-out strategy, hitting his second triple of the night when Saunders collected two defenders inside the key and fed the ball out to Rivard on the left wing.

“Any successful team has to have balance inside and out, and [the interior] play helped open up things for Laurent and I,” said co-captain Christian Webster, who added three triples of his own. “We were open and they were really unselfish inside.”

After adding one more in the first and another to open the second, Rivard’s final three of the night came with six minutes to play. Kirk hit back-to-back free throws to give the Lobos a one-point lead, but Rivard came back to give Harvard the lead that would carry the team to the end of the game.

While Rivard added 17 points on five-of-nine shooting from the field, Amaker also credited his composure and tough defense as a major factor in the Crimson’s victory.

Down two with just over seven minutes to play, Rivard drew the foul from deep as the clock wound down and sunk two of three free throws to tie up the score at 49. The guard came down with five rebounds and added two steals.

“Because he is such a deep threat from the shot, there are times where he has used the shot fake very effectively,” Amaker said. “He is guarding players that are a lot bigger than he is. For him to stick his nose in there and be tough around the basket, that says a lot about how scrappy and tough he can become when we need that against bigger players inside.”

—Staff writer Hope Schwartz can be reached at hschwartz@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter at @HSchwartz16.