“We weren’t over-extended to where we were always chasing,” Amaker said. “I thought we really played inside-out defensively. We tried to keep people in front of us and we were trying to trust and rely on help.”

Another consequence of Lewis’ dominance down low was that Harvard was able to do a remarkable job of protecting the basketball against Penn. A week after coughing the ball up 13 times at Cornell and two weeks after an 18-turnover performance at Brown, the Crimson had just six giveaways on Saturday. Harvard turned the ball over just twice in the game’s first 31 minutes.

“It’s very refreshing and we talked about it at the half that we did a tremendous job of taking care of the ball and we did it pretty much throughout the whole game,” Amaker said. “It’s exciting to see that our kids are growing. We are getting better. It’s nice to have that happen for these guys because they put a lot of work in to see this happen.”

—Staff writer Stephen J. Gleason can be reached at stephen.gleason@thecrimson.com.

—Check TheCrimson.com for updates. Full story to come after the game.