Midnight Sadness Comes to Harvard

While Harvard students will be preparing for midterms or getting the weekend started tomorrow night, many students at big-time college basketball schools will be gearing up for Midnight Madness, as, at 12 a.m., teams will be allowed to practice for the first time per NCAA regulations.

So, though the men’s basketball season starts Nov. 13 when the Crimson travels down to Fairfax, Va., to face George Mason, Harvard’s quest for its first Ivy League title begins in earnest this weekend.

If only we had a chance to be there.

Midnight Madness, a large event at other college campuses, has yet to land in Cambridge. Other schools, namely those from the power conferences, will fill their gymnasiums late tomorrow night so that students can come together and meet their team. In what is closer to a pep rally than a practice, players are introduced and then compete in dunk contests, three-point shootouts, and split-squad scrimmages.

(Last year at Kentucky, John Wall—now an NBA point guard that occasionally gets worked by Jeremy Lin ’10—dropped the “John Wall Dance” at “Big Blue Madness.”)

I know that Harvard hardly qualifies as a big-time college basketball program, but I have a hard time believing that Midnight Madness at Lavietes Pavilion would not be a huge hit.

First of all, the success of night games has demonstrated that students are actually very interested in going to Crimson athletic events. Harvard might not have the most passionate fan base, but undergrads turn out for these games. I suspect part of this appeal is that students want to come together instead of listlessly wandering between River Houses and final clubs. Given a once-a-year event like this, Midnight Madness could definitely gain a critical mass of support and garner a big crowd (provided that football and other fall sports teams could come).

Skeptics might say that no one will want to go across the river unless an actual game is taking place. They’re wrong. The game hardly matters. At a given Ivy League basketball game, one-third of the student section is interested in the play on the court, one-third is drunk, and one-third is there because the other two-thirds are there.

Midnight Madness would appeal to all three groups. Who could look away as Kyle Casey (get well soon) skies for a tomahawk jam or Brandyn Curry and Christian Webster launch the last bonus ball in the three-point contest? It would be like an All-Star weekend the first day of the season.

Not only that, students would get to know the players themselves. Instead of chants like “Let’s Go, Harvard,” fans would cheer for the stars, the benchwarmers, the seniors, and the freshmen, individually. “Ug-o O-kam” (clap, clap, clapclapclap). The team would ingratiate itself to the whole community in the process and begin to build an identity.

The spirit of Midnight Madness fits so well with this team. The coaching staff continually advertises its “exciting brand” of basketball—its up-tempo, aggressive style of play. It should seize the opportunity to jazz up the student body with some showmanship.

The women’s team should jump on this bandwagon as well and team-up with the guys for a coed full-court run. Kathy Delaney-Smith could match wits with Tommy Amaker on the sidelines (of course, she’ll still have bragging rights with her 11 Ivy League titles).

As of now, the closest the Crimson comes to hyping up its fans for the coming season is its annual Coaches’ Clinic, taking place this year on Oct. 30 with former NBA head coach and current Celtics assistant Lawrence Frank as the guest lecturer. Harvard students might love school, but even they prefer to keep their studies and their sports unmixed, I think.

Harvard’s basketball program has done a lot of things right lately. The men have nabbed recruits from the likes of Colorado, USC, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Boston College, Gonzaga, Arizona State, Utah, BYU, UNLV, Penn, and Cornell so far this fall.

Bringing Midnight Madness to Cambridge would be another step in establishing the Crimson as a legitimate college basketball destination.

—Staff writer Timothy J. Walsh can be reached at twalsh@fas.harvard.edu.