Last season, the Ivy title came down to the last weekend of the year. In what was essentially a two-team race for the crown, Harvard’s 70-58 win over Yale in New Haven earned the team its fourth-consecutive conference championship and punched its ticket to the NCAA Tournament.

With the Crimson’s win on Saturday, the last weekend of conference play in 2015 appears to hold similar stakes.

Coming into the contest, the Bulldogs owned a one-game lead over Harvard in the Ivy standings, as the latter was upset by Dartmouth on its home court two weeks ago. The Crimson needed to win on Saturday to stay in control of its title-chasing destiny, and the victory guarantees Harvard its fifth-consecutive league championship and fourth-straight trip to the Big Dance if it wins out.

Of course, Yale won’t make that easy for the Crimson, especially when it heads to Cambridge for the teams’ final matchup of the year in March. For a Yale program that hasn’t been to March Madness since 1962, that road swing could not have more on the line.

“We knew coming in that this was going to be a long season, and that’s what we’ve tried to preach—eyes on the prize,” explained Yale senior guard Javier Duren.

For Harvard, its win on Saturday sent them back to the top of conference standings, where it has spent much of the past half-decade. Thanks to its victory in New Haven, the rules of the game are simple for the Crimson from here on out: win and keep playing.

“It was a great game [tonight],” Saunders concluded. “[It was] a hard-fought game to the end, and that’s what it will always be like when the atmosphere is like this.”

And so it will be when Yale visits Harvard in just four short weeks.

—Staff writer Juliet Spies-Gans can be reached at juliet.spies-gans@thecrimson.com.