For three years, Ewing had been something of an enigma. His gangly body seemed to have been stretched out from 6'0 to fill out his implausible height, and his roommate once told me "Bill eats everything. He just can't put on any weight."

He once suffered the freakiest of injuries, getting his knee shattered by a brick thrown from an overpass through the windshield of his car onto a highway where he was driving with his family.

He was the dominant center on a New York State high school championship team, and in the final game of his high school career, he triple-doubled 1999-2000 NBA co-Rookie of the Year Elton Brand. Recruited as a key frontcourt contributor and handed the starting job at the beginning of his junior year, Ewing rapidly lost minutes to Paul Fisher '99 and faded far down Coach Frank Sullivan's bench.

Ewing was good for at least one acrobatic rejection a game, a solid playground stuff that makes everybody cringe--but he couldn't defend shorter, bulkier post players and his offense seemed theoretical at best.

The end of Ewing's Harvard career turned out to be a pure Hollywood script. When Fisher went down with mononucleosis halfway through the season, Ewing stepped into the starting five and played like--well, like Elton Brand. During one four-game stretch, he posted three double-doubles, including both games of the Penn-Princeton homestand as he matched up against the Quakers' Geoff Owens and the Tigers' Chris Young.

Against Princeton, Ewing was heroic. Hit with his fourth foul with 9:26 to play, Ewing nimbly and carefully frustrated the Tigers' big men like a kid playing precariously in an attic full of breakables. He helped hold Young and forward Mason Rocca to just three field goals in the last 10 minutes of regulation. But with 2:57 remaining in regulation and the Crimson clinging to a one-point lead, Ewing caught Rocca on the arm as the latter went up for a put-back, and Ewing was done with five fouls.

At first, he showed mock disbelief, his hand caught in the cookie jar. Then his face turned purple and he looked ready to weep, and had to be escorted from the floor by the refs, whereupon he buried his face in a towel and refused to watch.

After a trio of three-point buckets by Mike Beam '99 and an impossible 25-footer by junior Dan Clemente helped the Crimson pull away in overtime, Ewing was glowing in the interview room. His suit at least two sizes too small, he blabbed unstoppably, talking about his own battles with injury and poor production. He told the Elton Brand story gleefully, wrapping it up with the afterthought "You guys probably know all about what Elton Brand has accomplished."

He stole the show as Tim Hill '99 and Beam looked on with amusement. Veteran scorers and game-makers, they were as well-schooled in the press conference drill as they were in the full-court press: speak quickly and move it along. Ewing was new to the game and wanted to make it last. Only some prodding by Sports Information Director John Veneziano finally induced him to hit the bricks.

Ewing was a forgotten contributor to a Class of 1999 that put Harvard basketball on the map, winning a record 58 games during its four-year career. Hill, the flashy and deft point guard who played a year of pro ball in the Netherlands, and Beam, the reticent shooter with deadly aim, regularly eclipsed him. Even rookies Drew Gellert and Pat Harvey, whose quick hands and nose for the basket were scintillating to watch, got more press. But I'll remember Ewing's role in the Princeton upset most.

Like Brush, it just makes for the best story.