The game was still close, still only a two-possession game, but Harvard was back in control. And with Saunders replacing his typical dispassionate façade with his series of skips and his final, emotional fist pump, the Crimson ballooned its run to 17-5, effectively sealing the game both with Saunders’s passion and his performance.  

“He made a lot of key baskets,” Yale coach James Jones said. “He stepped up and made some shots. We guarded him with a couple different guys, but he was able to knock down shots. That’s what good players do…. You expect he will step up and make plays.”

PLAY ON

A win today, and Yale would’ve been competing in its first NCAA Tournament since 1962. Instead, the Elis will spend Selection Sunday waiting to hear whether they were allotted a bid to the NIT, a tournament thought of as a little brother to March Madness. 

Harvard, meanwhile, will head from the hardwood of The Palestra back to Cambridge, where, at 6 p.m. Sunday night, it will find out where it’s competing and who it’s competing against when it takes the floor of the Big Dance later this week.

The ticket punched with tonight’s victory marks Harvard’s fourth consecutive NCAA Tournament berth following a 66-year drought.

 For this team’s seniors, several of whom were so crucial in the late stages of Saturday’s contest, the win against Yale guaranteed a fairy-tale ending of sorts to their collegiate careers, as while they entered as freshmen into a program that had never won an outright Ivy title, they will graduate never having lost the Ancient Eight crown. For these seniors, Moundou-Missi’s shot guaranteed that they will finish their times in Crimson at the exact place that they reached in historical fashion three years ago—at the heart of March’s madness.   

“As a class, we talked about what we want our legacy to be,” Saunders said. “We wanted to cement our legacy tonight and come out with a victory. And we were able to do that.”

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