A Perfect Finish

PROVIDENCE, R.I.--Last night at Brown, the Harvard men's basketball team got exactly what it wanted--closure.

It was the last game of the season and the last for the team's four seniors, perhaps the best class in the Crimson's history. It gave Harvard a tie with Dartmouth for second place in the Ivy League, its highest finish since 1984. It was also a joke of a game, one in which Harvard led 32-6 at one time.

No, the Crimson is not a league champion. But for the first time since anyone on this team was born, Harvard ended a season with undisputed proof that it belongs in the upper echelons of the Ivy League.

Considering what type of history Harvard has, this is a major accomplishment. Crimson basketball is like a tragic opera without the fall from grace because there wasn't any grace to begin with. In over 90 years, Harvard has not won an Ivy League title and has had more single-digit win seasons than double-digit.

At the end of the 1993-94 season, Harvard went to Brown and Yale, and unsurprisingly lost both games. The team was listless and just seemed to want everything to end. The Crimson finished the year 9-17, winning only one of its last six games.

Kyle Snowden, Chris Grancio and Dave Demian were the three freshmen on the team then, the latter a J.V. callup for the weekend. Fast-forward to 1997, and that trio and fellow senior Dave Weaver combined for 40 points against Brown, giving their team--their team--a 17-9 record and wins in five of its last six games.

Around campus, many students are disappointed with the men's basketball team. They realized that this was Harvard's best chance in years to win the Ivy title, but one weekend of blowout losses at Penn and Princeton ended those dreams. Now, the team's nucleus graduates, and next year Harvard will have to rebuild.

This season was in fact the best chance in a long time for the "other" Ivy League schools to knock off Penn and Princeton from the top of the standings. Dartmouth also had a strong senior class (of Sea Lonergan, Brian Gilpin and Kenny Mitchell), but finished at 10-4 alongside Harvard.

But one thing stands out between these teams. Back in January, when Harvard beat Dartmouth in Hanover to salvage a season split, the Big Green players were unusually morose in the post-game press conference. It was like someone had died.

Yes, players are always sad after a loss, but this was extreme. It seemed like they felt that the loss jeopardized their plans to win the league, which would make the entire season meaningless. On Gilpin's long face, one could see four years of work going down the drain.

Harvard didn't look at the season this way. Sure, everyone wants to win the league, but the Class of '97 had a second goal--to get their team out of the doldrums. It took four years, but it worked.

So after Saturday's game laugher of a game, the four seniors weren't thinking of what could have been. They weren't even wistful about ending their long careers. They were happy, because they had finally won.