With the scale of the massacre so large, it may seem surprising that the Crimson was actually ahead in this game for a while.

It was not until there was 16:09 left in the second half before Miller nailed a baseline jumper to put Babson up for good, 50-49.

Falling Apart

From there, the Crimson defense, already suspect, disintegrated completely. Babson's slick interior passing and heads-up fast breaks left Harvard in its wake.

A wake might be an appropriate ceremony right now for the Crimson.

"We caught Harvard at the right time," Leip said. "All you have to do is give a Division III team a chance."

"It was a storybook win for them," Sullivan said.

Babson had Harvard on its heels from the opening tap, not letting the Crimson take the lead until 7:41 in the first half, when Peter Condakes buried a foul-line jumper to put Harvard up, 22-21.

"After the first ten or 15 minutes, we knew we were in it," Leip said. "We found that while they were better athletes, we were better basketball players."

Harvard widened its lead to eight, 38-30, with 2:45 to play in the first half, and it looked like the Crimson had finally reasserted itself. But Babson closed out the half with a 7-2 run.

"We got caught in a bad situation, and Babson capitalized," Sullivan said.

Opposite Directions

Babson raised its record to 6-0 with the victory, while the Crimson dropped to a pitiful 0-6.

For Harvard, the magnitude of the loss goes beyond anything that has happened thus far this season. Babson was the easiest opponent on the entire schedule and just a few weeks ago, a Beaver upset seemed unthinkable.

If the Crimson cannot beat Babson, it is going to have trouble beating anybody. The Ivy League portion of the Harvard schedule begins next week, and teams such as Brown, Princeton and Yale have already shown that they can do battle with the Division I heavyweights. For now, Harvard has to address the fundamentals.

"It's back to basics," Sullivan said. "Unfortunately, we have nothing to draw on to bounce back."

Mitchell declined to speak to the press following the game.