400 Men Of Harvard Witnessed Victory

Until Saturday night, I had assumed that the Harvard-Yale football game at the Yale Bowl in 2009 would be the best athletic event I would get to see as a student here.

I was wrong, and I’m lucky that I was.

The Harvard-Princeton basketball game at Lavietes last weekend was more than just a milestone for the school.

We know that the Crimson won its first-ever Ivy League title.

And with some help from the Tigers, the team could waltz at the Big Dance for the first time in over 60 years next week.

But even beyond the obvious, the game was a first—for me and for Harvard—in so many ways.

People were actually excited about the game when I walked into Lowell dining hall for a quick pre-game dinner.

Those who hadn’t gotten a ticket were scrambling to find the biggest screen that allowed for easy ESPN3.com access.

And it wasn’t just students who watched. I received a semi-regular stream of “I saw you on TV” texts throughout the game—granted, a few came from my mother—as fans from all over took an interest in the long-suffering basketball program.

Walking back to campus after the win, pedestrians broke out into an impromptu rendition of “10,000 Men of Harvard,” and perhaps more unexpected than the sing-along itself was the fact that most of the fans seemed to know the lyrics.

Perhaps most surprisingly, students didn’t get to the Pavilion on Harvard time. They didn’t even arrive at the start of the game at seven. The student section was filled 25 minutes before the game—commonplace by the standards of some schools, to be sure, but unheard of at a place where a 7 p.m. meeting doesn’t start until 7:20 and a 10 p.m. party doesn’t start until 11.

This was certainly a party.

As I settled into my 10th-row seat (a misleading name, considering I never got to sit) sandwiched between the women’s soccer team, my brother, and another Crimson sportswriter, I quickly realized I would have to tolerate a spot in the stands that didn’t allow for the most comfortable viewing.

The anticipation grew until the Tigers came onto the floor, and they were promptly met with a cacophony of jeers fitting a Richard Wagner rendition of Hava Nagila.

Whether Bill Simmons—in attendance and who once said that “the list of insufferable jerks from Princeton is longer than all the other Ivies combined”—joined in is unclear.

Despite the excitement, the matchup was not the best basketball game I had ever seen, and the best play was at the beginning. The Crimson and the Tigers went back-and-forth for the first 10 minutes of the game, and it remained knotted through the first half. Only a last-minute Princeton foul from behind the arc gave Harvard the chance to take a one-point lead into the intermission.

As the Crimson pulled away in the second half, the crowd became increasingly more raucous. Harvard opened it up with solid play in the paint, clutch free-throw shooting, and consistent rebounding, never letting the Tigers get too close.

For better or for worse, that’s not what the fans in attendance will remember.

To the sports fan in me, that’s a disappointment.

To the Crimson fan in me, that’s how it should be. I can always go back and watch Kyle Casey’s dunk on YouTube, and I certainly have.

But it’s impossible to recreate the elation that came with it. I won’t recall which Princetonian he beat to the rim, but what I’ll remember is high-fiving total strangers who shared the moment with me.

We all know that it was just a game. Certainly, it was an important one, and possibly the most significant in the history of the program, but it was still just a game.

What made it special was the atmosphere. For a few hours on Saturday night, the school was unified because of this basketball game.

Watching Casey control the game’s momentum in the second half was memorable. Chanting “I believe that we just won” in the waning seconds of the game, falling onto the people in front of me, and getting ready to storm the court will be the stories that I tell.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m very excited for the next few days of Harvard basketball.  In the words of Mel Brooks, “it’s good to be the king.” The Crimson, even if just for the next few hours, holds that throne alone.

As I rushed out of the stands after the game, my glasses nearly broke, and I really couldn’t see anything more than the haze of the masses bouncing around and streaming towards me. But in a way, I’m glad that I only remember the blurred pandemonium.

—Staff writer E. Benjamin Samuels can be reached at samuels@college.harvard.edu.