No matter how many foul-pole-hugging Game Six homers the Crimson may hit (witness the two Penn upsets and a miracle comeback against Dartmouth in 2000), its legacy—like the Red Sox’s—will always be one of hope giving way to heartbreak.

But we cannot write off the Crimson as merely an underachieving squad without any clutch players. You need special players and special moments to make you believe in the first place, long before heartbreak can set in.

And we were all believing on Saturday night. Down by 11 with only five minutes left, a Harvard win was the furthest thing from everyone’s minds. But then, out of nowhere, Brady Merchant happened.

The team’s soft-spoken captain—perhaps inspired by the ghosts of recent Crimson heroes Mike Beam ’99, Damian Long ’00 and Clemente—took the game in his own hands. Refusing to let the Crimson go quietly to another disappointing loss, Merchant drained three-pointer after magical three-pointer. The crowd, silent for most of the game, erupted and brimmed with a nervous and expectant energy too electric for words.

Just like that, those damn players were doing it to me again. I found myself believing again—even my goosebumps couldn’t believe it.

After the game, Princeton coach John Thompson III summed up Merchant’s heroics best, quipping that he wants to be Brady Merchant when he grows up. What kid (or even adult) sitting in Lavietes that night didn’t want to be in Merchant’s shoes, leading his team from the depths of defeat to the brink of sublime victory?

Sadly, the newfound hope was only another cruel pretext for familiar heartbreak. With the Crimson trailing by one with mere seconds left, Merchant passed the ball to teammate, roommate and close friend Prasse-Freeman and—well, the rest is history.

But Prasse-Freeman shouldn’t be as hard on himself as he was during the painful post-game interview.

After all, if expectation is the mother of disappointment, then we are only disappointed insofar as we have come to expect great things from our team. And we would never have come to expect great things from the Crimson players unless they were able to make us believe in the first place with all of those improbable, magical moments over the years.

Prasse-Freeman and Merchant shouldn’t worry too much about the legacy they’re leaving behind. It’s tough to swallow the bitter defeats and suffer through heartbreak, but at least they and their classmates were capable of making us believe, if only for fleeting moments of euphoria.

With any luck, their young teammates will realize that and be similarly inspired to “get over the hump” and chase that elusive league title. And if they can’t quite get there and suffer more heartbreak, they can always take solace in the adage that always rings true, especially with the coming of spring in Boston.

There’s always next year.

—Staff writer Daniel E. Fernandez can be reached at dfernand@fas.harvard.edu.