Amaker's Vision Becoming Reality

It’s been two weeks since the Harvard men’s basketball team stunned the college basketball world with its 68-62 victory over New Mexico. But for me, the gigantic upset was nowhere near the most surprising occurrence of the night.

I was instead most shocked on that historic evening by the fan support shown for the program whose rapid ascension to the top of the Ivy League has often been accompanied by an underlying hesitation about whether success on the basketball court is a type of success Harvard should be striving for.

My fellow beat writers and I attended all four games on the second round’s inaugural day, and the Crimson supporters were undoubtedly the second-most boisterous of the eight groups present (only following Gonzaga, the country’s No. 1 team).

I first noticed this about 90 minutes before tip, during my effort to purchase a souvenir t-shirt. Walking through the arena, a large number of people were wearing Crimson gear, and upon finally getting to the front of the long line and asking for the Harvard edition of the commemorative shirt, I was told, “You’re lucky—this is the last one.”

By the time I got back to my seat on press row, it was clear that Harvard’s fan section was filling up quicker than New Mexico’s, and at tip, the Crimson had at least as many—and very possibly more—fans in attendance than the Lobos, whose campus is about four times closer to the arena than Harvard’s is.

During the contest, the Crimson fans were louder, as well, with parents, alumni, and students alike trying to will the school to the upset. They chanted “defense” from the start, screamed mercilessly at the referees, and when Kenyatta Smith’s jump hook capped a 7-0 run that put Harvard up six with 4:33 to go, the building was louder than it had been at any point during the other three games that day.

This all came to a momentous climax with 49 seconds remaining, when New Mexico’s Kendall Williams lined up to shoot free throws. As he did so, the entire arena—save for the remaining Lobos fans—was loudly chanting “Let’s Go Harvard!”

By then, many of the neutral spectators had gotten behind the underdog, but to hear those three words ricocheting throughout the arena was nonetheless simply stunning.

For despite having covered the men’s basketball team for the past three seasons, I had never seen it garner that level of support. Indeed, on a number of recent occasions, Lavietes Pavilion has almost felt like a neutral court. The arena is made up of eight sections, and whenever opposing Ivy teams—especially Penn, Princeton, and, to a lesser extent, Cornell—visit Cambridge, a quarter of them are filled with supporters of Harvard’s rivals.

I believe that the obstreperous presence of Quaker fans in last season’s final regular season contest was a major reason why the Crimson’s 28-game home winning streak came to an end, and Tigers and Big Red fans always make their presence felt as well.

Of course, it’s understandable why those three schools would have the largest fan bases in the conference. The Killer P’s have been the Ancient Eight’s traditional powers; together, they account for almost 70 percent of league’s tournament appearances. Cornell, too, continues to reap the benefits of its recent three-peat and ensuing Sweet 16 run.

However, in those schools’ own home arenas—and in those of the rest of the Ivy League—Crimson fans have generally been nowhere to be found, despite the extraordinary levels of success the program has achieved over the last three seasons. Sure, a few alums show up here and there, and no, Ithaca and Princeton are not as easy to travel to as Boston. But in general, the Crimson’s road support has been substandard at best.

That’s why I was so stunned by the turnout in Salt Lake City. For the first time in three years, it really felt like Harvard had a fanbase—one that extended beyond the parents, couple hundred or so students, and few handfuls of alumni that normally come to games. For one day, at least, Harvard was no different than New Mexico, or Arizona, or Gonzaga, or Pittsburgh. It was a basketball school.

There are certainly those who resent this fact. Tommy Amaker has taken a lot of slack from those who fear that this Harvard is no longer their Harvard. They question the coach’s motives and complain about his tactics and criticize his practices to the point that minor issues get blown out of proportion—a self-reported unintentional secondary infraction is depicted as an act of deceitful cheating; a purported equalizing of standards is portrayed solely as a lowering of them.

This is not entirely surprising, for from substantial change always emerges those who wish to return to the past—even when the new represents a vast improvement over the old. That is the certainly case here, as the amount of good Amaker and the men’s basketball program has brought to Harvard’s campus far outweighs the hyperbolic “costs” of achieving it.

Because if I have learned one thing over the past three years, it is that Tommy Amaker does not want to win basketball games for himself. If he did, he simply would no longer be here. He would have accepted the offer from Miami that would have nearly quintupled his salary two years ago, or he would have been more amenable to strong interest from South Carolina or LSU last year. He would have done exactly what was done by his coaching opponent in the tournament, Steve Alford, who accepted the UCLA job just 10 days after signing a 10-year commitment to New Mexico. Or he would have done what Princeton’s Sydney Johnson did two seasons ago, when he parlayed the Tigers’ Ivy title into a Fairfield job that likely only represents one more stepping stone.

And nobody would have faulted Amaker if he had done so; after all, very few of us would turn down an employment opportunity where we would earn significantly more money, work in vastly better facilities, and be granted far more leeway to do our job.

But Harvard’s coach continues to do just that. He witnessed first-hand the obsessive focus placed on winning tournament games during his tenure at Michigan, and he was fired because he failed to achieve that. So at Harvard, sure, he wants to win, but not for the reason most athletes and coaches do—not for individual glory and notoriety. He wants to win for us.

Indeed, the rise of Harvard basketball has never been about capturing Ivy League championships or earning national recognition or recruiting elite talent. Since Amaker’s first day on the job, the reason he has wanted to do those things was, and continues to be, because they would help him to achieve his real overarching vision—the creation of a community the likes of which Harvard had never before seen. One where students would cross an icy river before going out on Friday and Saturday nights to support their classmates in the sport that can be most strongly swayed by a crowd. One where—like at Duke, Amaker’s alma mater—intelligent students with a wide array of academic and extracurricular passions could discover a new interest—college basketball. One where local residents of one of the nation’s best sports cities could add Harvard to their list of teams to support.

And that was exactly why those 10 seconds when Kendall Williams was shooting free throws were so meaningful. They signified that Amaker had won—not just in the tangible game itself, though it was certainly nice that the Crimson was about to do that too. No, Amaker had won because he had achieved his main goal. He had built a program about which the Harvard community cared. Genuinely, passionately cared.

It wasn’t just in EnergySoutions Arena that this was the case. Back home, the victory set off an incredible slew of celebratory Facebook posts from my fellow Harvard students, many of whom would normally have never placed the slightest bit of importance on sports. Dozens and dozens of status updates popped up in a row after the final buzzer from people who were proud of their college not because it was ranked first in the academic rankings, but because it had won a basketball game.

In general, school spirit largely does not exist at Harvard, with the exception of The Game—and even then, students tend to place more importance on individual revelry than on the actual play on the field or the eventual victor. Against New Mexico, however, people really cared about the Crimson winning, and that brought them together in the way that only sports can. This was best exemplified by the photo of the band’s joyous celebration, which went viral on Deadspin and Grantland largely because the general public did not expect so much excitement over a sporting event from a bunch of Harvard students.

What most of Amaker’s critics don’t realize is that it is precisely this sense of community that the men’s basketball program has brought to the campus—not the Top 25 appearances or the league titles—that is the coach’s greatest accomplishment, and the one of which he is most proud and cares most deeply.

Two days later, many members of that community gathered together throughout Harvard Square to watch the Crimson’s third round game against Arizona. And all the way across the country in Salt Lake, though its team was largely noncompetitive from the start, Harvard’s fan section remained vociferous, roaring passionately every time the Crimson made a shot. You could sense that whenever Harvard became ready to make a comeback attempt, its fans would be there alongside it, ready to do their best to help it do so.

That never happened, of course, and Harvard lost. But that was okay. Because by finally realizing its coach’s five-year vision—not on the court but on the campus surrounding it—the program had really already won.

—Staff writer Scott A. Sherman can be reached at ssherman13@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @ScottASherm.