But successful football is not just about going from game to game, it’s about growing from game to game, and nobody knows that better than Belichick. His teams have always improved immensely over the course of the year, 2014-2015 being no exception. 

After Saturday’s game, one reporter asked Amaker if he thought his team was the New England of the Ivy League. On the whole, a pretty silly question. The kind you get when there is not much else to ask about following a blowout win in the second press conference in two days.

But maybe there is at least one similarity this year.I left the University of Virginia game, a 76-27 horror show back in December, thinking this Harvard team might not be as good as it has been in years past—maybe not nearly as good. 

It relied too much on one man, senior wing Wesley Saunders, to score. Junior co-captain Siyani Chambers had not taken a leap forward and no wing or forward had emerged to replace Kyle Casey’s or Laurent Rivard’s scoring from the previous year.

That game could have been the end of an era. Instead, it was the prelude to Harvard’s long second night, so to speak.

 Since then, the Crimson’s one reliable scorer early in the season has seen his statistics take a nosedive. Saunders was held to fewer than 15 points just once before the UVA game. He hasn’t scored more than 15 since.

By month, his points-per-game average has dropped from 22 in November to 15 in December to 11 in January.

But that’s been good for the Crimson. Saunders had 14 assists and 11 rebounds over the two games this weekend and registered his first zero-turnover performance against Penn.Meanwhile, four players finished in double-figures against Penn, a night after five scored 10 points or more against Princeton.

Co-captain Steve Moundou-Missi recovered from his 26-percent-shooting December to shoot 50 percent from the field in January. Senior forward Jonah Travis emerged to provide energy off the bench. Junior Agunwa Okolie had his first two double-digit outings of the year on back-to-back nights. 

Sure, the second night refers to a specific quirk of Ivy basketball schedule. But for this team, it could also be a larger mantra. It’s code for tomorrow, for getting another day to attack the same challenge. 

And while that four-week stretch during which Harvard went 4-4 looked pedestrian, there was a second night—this weekend—during which the Crimson seemed to get back on track.

—Staff writer Jacob D.H. Feldman can be reached at jacob.feldman@thecrimson.com.