After making its first NCAA tournament in decades last season, the men’s basketball team took another step forward this season. The team captured an Ivy title in the season’s final weekend and then took down heavily favored New Mexico, 68-62, in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

Entering the 2012-13 season, there were few things the Harvard men’s basketball program had yet to accomplish.

In the previous three years, the Crimson had achieved its first 20-win campaign in 2009-10, won its first Ivy League title in 2010-11, and appeared in its first NCAA Tournament since 1946 in 2011-12.

Coming into this season, only one significant unchecked box remained on the team’s list of goals—winning a game in March Madness.

But on March 21, that milestone was finally reached when the Crimson stunned the college basketball world with a 68-62 win over New Mexico. The victory over the third-seeded Lobos turned the No. 14 Crimson into an early tournament Cinderella and marked the squad’s first-ever victory over a team ranked in the Associated Press Top 10.

“This is the type of thing you dream about in your backyard,” sophomore Wesley Saunders said after the contest. “For it to actually happen now is incredible.”

At the beginning of the season, few gave the Crimson a chance of achieving that goal.

Before the squad had even played its first game, the team’s co-captains, seniors Kyle Casey and Brandyn Curry, left the College after being implicated in the Government 1310 cheating scandal.

Their departures cost Harvard its leading scorer and a first-team All-Ivy forward in Casey and its floor general and assists and steals leader in Curry. Only a trio of inexperienced sophomores—Kenyatta Smith, Steve Moundou-Missi, and Jonah Travis—remained at the forward position, while rookie Siyani Chambers was the best remaining option at point guard.

But despite the voids left by the departure of his two stars, Amaker told his team that it still had enough talent to compete.

“We might not have what we had, but we have enough,” Amaker repeatedly said, and the squad, picked in the preseason to finish second behind Princeton in the conference, took that message to heart as a number of players elevated their games in the absence of their two talented teammates.

Chambers ran the offense like a seasoned veteran and surpassed all expectations, leading the nation’s freshmen in assists and minutes per game. The rookie point guard scored 21 points in Harvard’s fifth-straight win over Boston College, hit a game-winning jumper with four seconds remaining against Boston University, and poured in 22 to rally the Crimson to a road win at Dartmouth in its first league contest.

“It was beautiful to see how he was able to perform,” Amaker said. “Being a first-year kid, the impact he had was off the charts.”

Saunders improved his scoring output from 3.3 points per game as a freshman to an Ivy League-best 16.2 as a sophomore, tallying double-figures in every regular season contest while defending the opponent’s best perimeter scorer.

“We leaned on him so much,” Amaker said. “He was the best all-around player in our league.”

The young pair were both chosen to the All-Ivy League first team, with Chambers becoming the first freshman to ever receive that honor. Despite a grueling schedule, the duo helped Harvard go 8-6 during non-conference play, highlighted by a 67-62 road upset of California on Jan. 29.