Coming off an impressive win against Brown and up 16 points at the half versus Yale, forgive the men’s basketball team and its rowdy fans if they had visions of an Ivy title dancing through their heads.

Twenty minutes of nightmarish basketball later, those hoop dreams seemed a distant reality.

The Crimson (11-7, 4-2 Ivy) lost its 16-point lead in less than twelve minutes as a heartbreaking second half collapse allowed the Bulldogs (13-7, 5-1) to take sole possession of second place in the League with a 66-57 triumph Saturday night at Lavietes Pavilion.

“Our team had really shown solid poise this season, but this is really the first time we didn’t bounce back,” Harvard Coach Frank Sullivan said.

The loss to Yale—Harvard’s second in league play—drops the Crimson into a third-place tie with Penn and Brown (13-6, 4-2). The Crimson bested the Bears on Friday night, 89-81, on the strength of double-digit scoring efforts from four different players and stifling team defense.

The win was televised live on DirecTV, marking the first time a Harvard men’s basketball home game has been shown to a national audience.

The weekend split represents Harvard’s last home games for three weeks as the Crimson will travel next weekend to Cornell and Columbia followed by important road showdowns with Ivy powers Penn and Princeton the following weekend.

“Everyone is acutely aware of the challenges that lay ahead [on the four-game road trip],” Sullivan said.

The Crimson hopes to avoid the fate of last year’s squad that lost four road games in a row after a bitterly disappointing Saturday home loss.

Yale 66, Harvard 57

For the second straight year, the Bulldogs left Lavietes Pavilion with an improbable win despite Pat Harvey’s best efforts.

Last year, an overmatched Yale squad shut down Dan Clemente and squeakedout a thrilling 85-83 overtime win. Harvey’s team-high 19 points in that contest were overshadowed by a game-high 22-point effort by then-sophomore Chris Leanza.

This year, Leanza’s one-point performance was not enough to singlehandedly erase Harvey’s game-high 21 points, but a balanced offensive counterattack from a supporting cast of Elis successfully put away the Crimson in the second half.

Down 38-22 after shooting 36 percent from the field and nine percent from beyond the arc, Yale was able to mount a torrid comeback to open the second half by converting on 61 percent of its shots while holding Harvard scoreless for a seven-minute stretch.

Harvard’s defensive collapse coincided with the benching of senior captain Drew Gellert due to foul trouble early in the second period. With 17:53 left to play, Gellert was driving to the basket and was called for his third foul on a questionable play that could have been ruled a blocking foul instead of an offensive infraction.