Gellert was a throwback in that regard. In high school, he took up football in his senior season on a whim, because a buddy encouraged him to come out for the team. In that one season, he broke a 26-year old interceptions record and, as a receiver, caught 90 balls, the most of anyone in state history since 1970.

Gellert never got the chance to play football at Harvard, but he did catch a touchdown pass in a Harvard uniform once.

With 30 seconds left in a close contest at Dartmouth last year, Clemente lined up to make an inbounds pass under Harvard’s hoop, staring down a frantic full-court press applied by the Big Green.

Suddenly, there was Gellert, breaking free down the floor, splitting the defense, hauling in a baseball pass from Clemente. He converted the breakaway layup, giving Harvard a 57-53 lead and, eventually, the win.

Three years ago, Gellert was the heir apparent at point guard when Harvard great Tim Hill ’99 graduated. That was before a flashy playmaker and soon-to-be all-time Ivy League assist leader from Seattle showed up on the scene. Even with Elliott Prasse-Freeman’s arrival in Cambridge in the fall of 1999, Gellert likely still would have begun that season as the point guard had he not gone down with a separated shoulder in the preseason.

Gellert could have missed a large chunk of the season with that injury. He didn't miss a game.

From then on, though, he was mainly a small forward.

The reshuffling was never a problem for Gellert, who was moved around the floor like a chess piece throughout his career, depending on which big-name scorer was coming to town that weekend.

Flinder Boyd. Earl Hunt. Wallace Prather. Gellert got the better of all of them.

The only thing tougher than beating Gellert off the dribble was getting him to open up at a postgame press conference.

But lest anyone pigeonhole him strictly as one of those speak-softly-and-lead-by-example types, along came last week’s game at Penn. At the Palestra, the team benches are actually the first row of the bleachers, and press row is actually the second row, placing the media squarely behind the players.

For anyone who cared to notice, the other side of Drew Gellert—the side his teammates knew was on full display during each and every timeout. While Sullivan consulted with his assistants and diagrammed the next play, Gellert was shouting at the top of his lungs to his huddled teammates, a towel clenched furiously in his fist.

Sitting one row back, it was impossible to make out any of his words above the din of the Penn band and the loudmouths hurling taunts. But it’s safe to assume Gellert’s teammates heard him loud and clear. That, it seems, was all he ever intended.

As he was introduced with his parents during a pregame ceremony Saturday night, it was Gellert—the man who thrived for so long in the shadow of his friend and former captain, Clemente—who was praised for setting the standard by which future captains of Harvard basketball would be judged.

“Being a captain here in our program is a big deal,” Sullivan said Saturday. “We don’t have co-captains, we have captains.