Lin leads Crimson scoring coming into Friday’s game at Levien

ESPN has featured him. This week’s edition of Sports Illustrated has a four-page spread on him. In a league not known for garnering so much national media attention, Harvard’s Jeremy Lin is big news.

And this Friday, he comes to Morningside Heights to take on Columbia in Levien Gym. Lin’s 17.1 points per game lead the Crimson, as do his 4.8 assists per game. The athletic 6-foot-3 scorer has also posted impressive numbers defensively, tallying 48 steals on the year—also a team high—as well as 4.5 rebounds per game and 21 blocks, the second-highest total behind Harvard’s key big man, Kyle Wright.

Behind those numbers lies an even more impressive list of accomplishments. While some of the press coverage has revolved around Lin’s assault on racial stereotypes as an Asian-American basketball star, his efforts on the court speak to his ability as a player, regardless of color. He has lifted a Harvard program that has never won a conference title to a 13-3 record in his senior year, with two of those losses coming against traditional powerhouses Georgetown and UConn. Lin’s 30-point explosion against UConn won over many critics, and he is considered to be a bona fide NBA prospect, which is an Ivy League rarity. Harvard’s last NBA player, Ed Smith, played in 1953.

Lin’s journey to college basketball stardom began in Palo Alto, where he showed signs of the talent and leadership that would help him inject life into the Harvard program as a collegian. As a senior he led his high school basketball team to the California state title with an upset win over nationally ranked Mater Dei. That year Lin led his team to a 32-1 record by averaging 15.1 points, 7.1 assists, 5.0 steals, and 6.2 rebounds per game. When he was a junior, Lin’s Palo Alto squad went 31-2 after a 25-4 mark his sophomore year.

As a freshman in Cambridge, Mass., Lin appeared in all 28 games as one of the first players off the bench. He posted double-digit scoring performances on four occasions in his first year, despite playing 19 minutes a game. In the second Harvard-Columbia encounter that year, Lin had one of his best games of the year, scoring 10 points to go with four rebounds and a steal.

With a year of experience under his belt, Lin came into his own as a sophomore, starting all 30 games and earning the team MVP award in the process. He led the league in steals with 48, and was among the Ivy leaders statistically in points (12.6 per game), shooting percentage (.448), assists (107), and assist-to-turnover ratio (+1.30). For his efforts, Lin earned second-team all-Ivy League honors.

Lin finished his ascent to Ivy League prominence as a junior. He made filling up the box score a season-long trend, becoming the only player in Division I competition that year to finish in the top 10 of every statistical category in his conference. Lin garnered first-team all-Ivy League honors, averaging 17.8 points per game.

As a result, he came into this year as a near-unanimous first-teamer in preseason selections, and Lin has more than lived up to expectations. Nevertheless, Columbia head coach Joe Jones is quick to point out the talented Harvard squad is not a one-man team.

“He’s their best player,” Jones said, “but they are really, really talented.”

And while such a talented scorer warrants more attention, Jones does not foresee the Lions employing some kind of special scheme to corral Lin. Instead, he plans to rely on his squad’s strength—team defense.

“Obviously, if the kid’s their best scorer, there are some certain things that we want to do with certain guys … but when we’re at our best defensively, we play a very good team game.” Jones emphasized the team’s mantra of “five guys playing together,” explaining that “that’s what we really talk about.”

Jones does acknowledge that “[Lin] is going to get some special attention, because you have to.” Columbia sophomore Noruwa Agho, the Lions’ breakout scorer, has seen that same type of attention this year. How each team’s talented perimeter player deals with the smothering defenses this Friday will have a large impact in determining the night’s winner.

After Agho struggled against Cornell, he may be primed for a big performance. And with Jeremy Lin’s luminous spotlight coming to town, the stage is set for an intense matchup.