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Harvard at Yale, 7:00 PM Eastern, No TV
Today’s UTR Game of the Day selection is really a no-brainer. Harvard is traveling to New Haven, Connecticut, and not because the Crimson want to eat at Louis’ Lunch (birthplace of the hamburger sandwich!). Harvard is in town instead for the most important Ivy League game so far this season. At this point in the season, while we expected these two teams to be leading the way in the Ivy, we did not expect it to be Yale up a game in the standings and for Harvard to be the team struggling for wins (last week at Princeton and last night at Brown being two prime examples). Tonight’s game will determine whether Harvard will spend the rest of the season chasing the Bulldogs or if the teams will instead battle it out in a tight race.
Harvard enters tonight’s game at 4-1 in conference play and 14-5 overall. While players like Siyani Chambers, Wesley Saunders and Steve Moundou-Missi have the Crimson looking like the most talented team in the conference on paper, inexplicable losses this season to the likes of Holy Cross, Dartmouth and Boston College have the Crimson struggling and trying to play catch-up in a conference whose only NCAA tournament bid is going to go to the regular season champion. A loss tonight will be their second on the season already and would take control of the Ivy League title race out of their hands, as even winning out after this game would not guarantee that they could catch the Bulldogs.
Yale is currently 5-0 in Ivy League play and 16-6 overall, including having won at defending national champion Connecticut earlier this season. Their worst loss so far was at NJIT (the People’s Team!), but even that was excusable as Justin Sears, their best player, missed all but about one minute of the game when he had a tooth knocked out in a first half collision with another player. Yale can take control of the Ivy League with a home win tonight, and may even start having to worry about Princeton (a team that also has only 1 Ivy league loss heading into their game at Cornell tonight) more than Harvard.