Hey, 1979 Penn Final Four Team? Don’t worry, you’re safe! And for that matter so too are the 1976 undefeated Indiana Hoosiers. Might as well throw in the 1972 undefeated Miami Dolphins. The 2014-15 Harvard Crimson men’s basketball team is not going undefeated. And it’s probably not going to the Final Four.
But let’s put Sunday’s one-point loss on a neutral court to a good Holy Cross team that had given the Crimson challenging games in each of the past two years in proper perspective … a perspective that all the Crimson-haters throughout the league often forget.
This is a very good Harvard team, incredibly athletic, with a mix of seasoned veterans and young learners. They were probably worthy of a No. 25 preseason AP ranking and will probably end up near that recognition as well.
But what they have to learn, and what other nationally ranked Ivy League teams of recent memory (Cornell, Princeton – although that wasn’t so recent) had to learn, is that a national ranking brings with it expectations and pressure to perform like a nationally ranked team every night. And frankly, that’s not easy for an Ivy League team, nor should it be.