“It’s one of those games where you’re dumbfounded, a little befuddled,” Amaker said. “We haven’t been like that this year. We normally have had stretches where we haven’t played as well, but we’ve found ways out of it.”

III. A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN

For the last two years, the Crimson had to rely on the losses of other teams—Penn and Princeton—to clinch its berth in the NCAA Tournament. With the graduation of Tiger Ian Hummer ’13, the reigning Ivy League Player of the Year, the odds looked good for Harvard to nab the 2013-2014 Tourney bid without much trouble.

But Yale sophomore Justin Sears would emerge as a force in New Haven. Suddenly, what looked like an easy ride turned into a gritty Ivy season in which the Crimson had to continually look over its shoulder, glancing southwest to find out what happened at Yale’s Payne Whitney Gymnasium.

In other words, at least for this season, the “Big Game” in the Harvard-Yale rivalry shifted from the gridiron to the hardwood, and which team would punch a ticket to the Big Dance largely came down to a single contest in the last weekend of the year.

But, to get to that position, Harvard first had to drive past the rest of the Ancient Eight.

The Crimson began its conference season with two games against Ivy travel partner Dartmouth. With an injury to Big Green star Gabas Maldunas in the squads’ first matchup—a 61-45 Harvard win—the second contest proved to be no contest at all, and Harvard took down the Big Green on the road, 80-50. It was two Crimson veterans that led the team in its opening series of conference play, as Curry totaled 31 points and 10 assists in the two games, while junior forward Steve Moundou-Missi notched 28 points and went a perfect 10-of-10 from the charity stripe.