Harvard all-time moment No. 7: Harvard’s amazing comeback vs. North Carolina in first round of 2015 NCAA Tournament

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Harvard is next because …go Knicks!

March 15, 2015 was Selection Sunday, and Harvard fans and players gathered in the Murr Center in Cambridge to see who the Crimson would face in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. This was the fourth consecutive year the Crimson would be dancing. In the previous three years, they had faced three solid teams in Vanderbilt, New Mexico and Cincinnati. Then the brackets were revealed, and Harvard learned that this year it was matched against perennial national championship contender North Carolina. Everyone knew this year would be different.

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Harvard all-time moment No. 8: Dartmouth keeps Harvard in the dance

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Harvard is next because why not turn fat cells into lasers?

March 6’s bout between the Yale Bulldogs and the Harvard Crimson was the rubber match of the 2015 Ivy League season. People (like me!) called it “The Game 2.0.” Yale came into Crimson territory and left with a big win, one that seemed to ensure that the Bulldogs would go to the Big Dance for the first time in 53 years. All Yale needed to clinch sole possession of the Ivy League title was a win at Dartmouth the next night, or a Harvard loss to Brown. As for Harvard, there was only one way left for them to tie Yale for the Ivy title: Defeat Brown the following night and pray for the Big Green to shock the Bulldogs in Hanover.

The Crimson took care of business at Lavietes Pavilion, beating Brown 72-62 behind a strong second-half surge. As the Harvard-Brown game ended, a group of diehard Crimson fans in Lavietes turned their attention to the Dartmouth-Yale game, which Yale led by two with 10 minutes to go. The teams battled hard until, with 24 seconds remaining, Yale led by three and had possession of the ball. Then craziness ensued.

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James Jones, Tony Lavelli to be inducted into New England Basketball Hall of Fame

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Yale Athletics announced Tuesday that the school’s all-time winningest coach James Jones and 1949 National Player of the Year Tony Lavelli will be inducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame on Aug. 8 at the DCU Center in Worcester, Mass.

Jones has helmed the Bulldogs since 1999, and Yale has finished in the top half of the league for each of the past 15 years, winning a share of the Ivy crown in 2002 and 2015.

Lavelli led the Elis to a NCAA Tournament appearance in 1949, his senior season, before being selected by the Boston Celtics in the first round of the NBA Draft that year. He played the next two seasons in the NBA with the Celtics and New York Knicks.

Lavelli was also an outstanding accordian player, even providing halftime entertainment with accordian appearances, and released two records as an accordionist. He died in 1998.

 

Harvard all-time moment No. 9: Beating Bill Bradley in 1964

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Harvard is next because eight U.S. presidents attended Harvard, exactly half the current Republican presidential candidate field.

On Feb. 7, 1964, Harvard took the floor in front of a packed Harvard Indoor Athletic Building to face Bill Bradley’s Princeton Tigers. That year, Bradley would be named an All-American for the third time, lead the conference in scoring with 33.1 points per game and set the still standing Ivy record for most points in a season (936). He would lead Princeton to a 12-2 record and the Ivy League championship and even win the gold medal on the U.S. Olympic Basketball Team. On this winter night in Cambridge, however, Bill Bradley’s banner year was rudely interrupted by the Ivy League’s perennial bottom feeder.

Bradley had a below average night against Harvard, scoring only 30 points. On the other side, Harvard’s Merle McClung matched Bradley with 30 points of his own, and Keith Sedlacek dropped 31 points, leading the Crimson to a remarkable 88-82 victory. The monumental win over the best player the Ivy League has ever witnessed was huge for the Crimson, as it put them in a tie for first place at the time. Unfortunately, Harvard finished a lackluster 6-8 in Ivy play that year, continuing an 18-year title drought which didn’t end until 47 years later.

Harvard all-time moment No. 10: Clinching second NCAA Tournament appearance

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Harvard is next because a Harvard study has predicted the Miami Dolphins are going to the Super Bowl, and that’s totally going to happen.

Going into the final weekend of the 2013 Ivy League season, Princeton led Harvard by half a game, after Harvard had been swept by the P’s only a weekend earlier. The Tigers were in control of their own destiny: three wins and they would be in the tournament. However, Friday night had yielded a Harvard win and a Princeton loss, essentially tying the two teams atop the conference. A Crimson win over Cornell and a Princeton loss to Brown would clinch the tournament for Harvard, but if both teams won out – as was expected –  another Ivy playoff would ensue.

Harvard vs. Cornell began at 5:30 p.m. in Cambridge, while Princeton vs. Brown began a half hour later in Providence. Harvard led Cornell all game and won by nine points, behind 16 points from Siyani Chambers and 17 points from Laurent Rivard. Then all attention turned to Providence, where Brown led Princeton by four points at the half, leading many Harvard fans and players to stick around Lavietes Pavilion in case something miraculous happened. One fan was able to turn on the PA system, and he announced the score every time a bucket was scored. As the game wound down, Brown gained a commanding lead. The Harvard crowd became giddy with excitement as the Crimson clinched their second straight NCAA Tournament appearance (more on that later).

Check out the last few seconds of this video to see the Harvard fans’ reaction.

 

Javier Duren signs with Holland’s Aris Leeuwarden

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(yalebulldogs.com)
(yalebulldogs.com)

Eurobasket.com reported Saturday that 2015 Yale graduate and All-Ivy first-teamer Javier Duren has signed a contract with Holland’s Aris Leeuwarden in the Eredivisie League.

Duren averaged 10.2 points per game for his career, as well as 14.0 points, 5.5 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 1.3 steals per contest in 2014-15 as he led the Bulldogs to a share of the Ivy League championship.

 

Wesley Saunders agrees to deal with New York Knicks

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Shams Charania of RealGM reported Friday night that former Harvard standout Wesley Saunders has agreed to a partially guaranteed deal by the New York Knicks. Further details have not yet been released.

Saunders, 2013-14 Ivy Player of the Year and a 2015 graduate, averaged just 3.4 points per game during his NBA Summer League stint with the Utah Jazz.

Partially guaranteed contracts signed mid-summer usually result in a training camp audition, which is still great news for Saunders, who now has the chance to follow Jeremy Lin, a 2010 Harvard graduate, as a former Crimson star turned Knicks standout.

Saunders averaged 12.6 points, 4.1 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.5 steals per game for his collegiate career, including 16.6 points and 6.1 boards per contest last season.

Knicks blog Posting & Toasting notes that the Knicks have plenty of backcourt minutes available, meaning that “Saunders can gun for a full guarantee and perhaps a share of those minutes.”

Ivy League office selects all-time best women’s and men’s teams

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The Ivy League did something interesting Thursday – it tweeted out its all-time best women’s and men’s teams as selected by the Ivy League office, consisting of five players each. Check out the league’s selections with thoughts after the jump…

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Yale all-time moment No. 1: Elis share the 2015 title

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. We did Yale next by request of Justin Sears:

We all know the 2014-15 Yale men”s basketball season didn”t have a storybook ending. Just four months ago, Harvard edged out Yale at the Palestra, 53-51, in an already legendarily back-and-forth Ivy playoff game after the Bulldogs let a last-second lead literally slip away at Dartmouth that would have clinched the Elis” first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1962. Then the NIT online casino inexplicably slipped away too.

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Yale all-time moment No. 2: CIT final berth in 2014

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Yale is next by request of Ivy Player of the Year Justin Sears.

Yale”s run through the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT) first round in 2014 was quite the roller coaster. First, a three-pointer banked in by Justin Sears with 0.07 seconds left gave Yale a 69-68 squeaker over Quinnipiac. Then in the second round, Yale prevailed at Holy Cross, 71-66, overcoming a 66-65 deficit with 1:43 remaining to make James Jones online casino the winningest coach in Yale basketball history (surpassing Joe Vancisin). Yale”s next win came by a 72-69 at Ivy rival Columbia, which had beaten the Bulldogs 62-46 on the same Levien Gym floor.

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