Suddenly the chants of “I believe that we will win” did not seem so ridiculous.

The Tigers managed to inbound the ball to Kareem Maddox. After being fouled, Maddox walked the length of the court to the stripe, where he was able to knock down the first, and then the second.

“I thought [Maddox] played a tremendous game,” Amaker said. “I thought he was the difference. It seemed like every time that they broke down a little bit, he made the play.”

With Harvard down by three with the final possession, everyone in the crowd knew whose hands the ball would be in. Lin received the ball a few feet beyond the arc with just a handful of ticks on the clock. The guard worked off a screen from Casey but ran into traffic and dished it to the rookie on the perimeter. Casey looked to the basket, but upon seeing the defender in his face, passed it back to Lin, who was now feet beyond the three-point line.

Lin lofted a shot that clanged off the front of the rim as the buzzer sounded, which silenced the Crimson crowd and sent the Princeton players into a frenzy.

“It was a desperation shot,” Lin said. “We ran a quick screen and roll at the top of the key. I was hoping both defenders would come with me, but one stayed with Kyle and that disrupted it because no one was open.”

The loss—Harvard’s first at home all season—drops the Crimson to 3-2 in the Ivy League, making it unlikely that the Jeremy Lin era of Harvard basketball will conclude with the program’s first-ever league championship.

“It puts us in a huge hole, but we just got to take care of everything one game at a time,” Lin said. “It puts us really far behind but we understand crazier things have happened. We have to make sure we don’t drop any more games.”

—Staff writer Martin Kessler can be reached at martin.kessler@college.harvard.edu.