The actual story is much more tragic. The loss to Princeton completely reversed the Crimson's luck, as Harvard went on the road the next two weekends and dropped four in a row. After that tailspin, it took wins over Cornell and Columbia in Harvard's final two games of the season just to salvage a .500 league record.

"We have to find some resolve from this heartbreaking loss," Harvard Coach Frank Sullivan had said after falling to the Tigers.

But that resolve was never found. Wente had sunk Harvard's momentum right along with that last-second shot. Up until that point, the Crimson had been every bit the contender for its first-ever Ivy title. For the first time in eons, the league race was wide open, and Harvard-along with Yale and Brown-was making a full-fledged charge at dethroning Penn and Princeton.

The Crimson's stunning victory over Dartmouth in the Ivy opener back on had set the tone for its remarkable early-season run. With the Crimson trailing 78-74, Clemente buried a trey to trim the deficit to one point with 6.3 seconds to play.

All Dartmouth had to do was inbound the ball and run out the clock to seal the win. But Harvey stole Flinder Boyd's inbound pass a la Larry Bird (circa 1987) and then drew a foul. Harvey-who led the country in free-throw shooting at different points this season- sank both shots from the line, as Harvard shocked the Big Green 79-78.

It was not the only time that the sharp-shooting Harvey-who returned to the Crimson this season after taking his sophomore year off-would play the role of hero. Over the course of the year, he established himself as a viable alternative to Clemente on offense. In situations where Clemente was likely to be double- or triple-teamed in the waning stages of a game, Harvard did not hesitate to put the ball in Harvey's hands.

And when the game was on the line, Harvey invariably rose to the occasion. In Harvard's second meeting with Dartmouth this season, Harvey's clutch performance at the free throw line helped secure a narrow 60-56 win on the road. Then, with the score tied in the closing seconds of a non-league battle with Hartford, Harvey hit a running jumper in the lane to give the Crimson the victory as time expired. Clutch, last-second performances became the trademark of Harvey's-and Harvard's-success.