Rogus led the Crimson with 13 points, while Beal added 12 despite playing out of position at point guard, where he was constantly harassed by the Stags’ small, quick back court.

Before the game, few spectators expected Harvard—which lost all five of its opening-night starters from last year—even to remain close to Fairfield, which went to the National Invitation Tournament last year.

“It’s not like a moral victory where we feel good about ourselves for putting up a good fight or anything like that because we expect ourselves to win,” Beal said. “After the game, a lot of people came up to me and were like, ‘you all are a lot better than I thought’ and I was just like, ‘I’ve been telling you all all along that we are a very good team.’”

But Sullivan’s broader perspective allowed him to accentuate the positives more.

“The biggest thing—because we went in with so much unknown of our team—I think our guys have some confidence they can play,” he said. “This was a lot better than our exhibition game. It was clearly a lot better than our red-and-white game last Saturday, so I think they know that in the last 14 days, they’ve made some progress.

“Did they come down tonight nervous? Absolutely. Did they come down tonight kind of anxious? Absolutely. Did they come down tonight wondering, ‘How’s this even going to turn out? We don’t know’?” Yeah. But I think at the end of the day, they came out saying, ‘Oh, we can be all right.’”

—Staff writer Alan G. Ginsberg can be reached at aginsber@fas.harvard.edu.