'BLO IT RIGHT BY 'EM: Harvard-Yale Always Intense

Remember February 14, 2004?

It was Valentine’s Day, but it also was Harvard 78, Yale 71, if you don’t recall.

At the time, you could have said the result was a well-deserved present to the Yale Daily News, which had taken the opportunity to forecast a basketball game that—and I quote—“shouldn’t even be close.”

And you would have had a lot of fun doing so.

But, ultimately, what happened at this game truly did not deserve to emerge as so much of a surprise, an upset, a shocker, whatever you want to call it.

Really, if you knew anything about sports, Harvard, or Yale—whether you’re a freshman or senior—you should have known better than to make any kind of categorical prediction about the contest in the first place.

Yes, even though our basketball team was 3-17 before tip-off; even though the Bulldogs had led eventual national champion (a healthy No. 1 Connecticut) at the half in its first game of the season.

Despite all those things, you still should have known better, and this weekend only gives me more reason to scold you for doing otherwise.

Because this weekend, the sport wasn’t basketball, but it didn’t really matter.

The lesson to be learned from a men’s lacrosse game in New Haven was the same to be taken from Valentine’s Day night at Lavietes.

When junior Mike McBride scored the game-winning goal past Bulldog netminder Jordan Ellis with 2.7 seconds remaining, he rendered the game just the latest in a long string of contests that are anything but predictable.

Of course, there have been a bunch of times when Yale has crushed Harvard, and vice-versa. Sometimes, there were just no illusions—before, or after—about what would transpire.

But it’s not so much about what will be, but what can—and the amazing, exemplary fashion in which it does.

Admittedly, the notion I’m discussing is a bit abstract. But still, one cannot deny that there exists what can only be described as an intangible—some sort of a x-factor—which renders foolish preview headlines like “M. Bball Expects No Surprises” senseless.

And, in best-case scenarios, like on that fateful Valentine’s Day, enjoyably ironic.

On Saturday, a Harvard-Yale game once again showed itself as a battle between two names and one of the most storied sports rivalries of all time, just like all the others.

This game—like all the others between the Elis and the Cantabs—was from the very start about institutions and history, and not simply about two teams’ individual seasons, in the same way that Yankees-Red Sox is supposedly about 86 years of history and not just one.

It was about pride and going to Harvard, quite frankly, and the expectations fundamental to any good 300-year-old rivalry.

On that aforementioned Valentine’s Day of this year, the Harvard basketball team appeared to get just that—just felt it, maybe, as a suddenly energetic crowd urged them on—and the team unwrapped a lovely Valentine’s Day present for the Bulldog faithful with pre-game journalistic assaults having only heightened the tension.

Somehow, the stakes got even higher than they were already going to be, and now you know the rest of the story.

For just as The Game 2003 was historic for more than football-related numbers, more than Ivy League standings, so was this.

So was Saturday.

Just as the teams’ men’s ice hockey match-up from earlier in the year was incredible, something to be remembered—an astonishing comeback from being down 5-1 to win by a score of 7-5—so was this.

Just as a row of other close, bitterly-contested contests throughout the years have erupted to shatter the entire notion of the foregone conclusion—and, at times, logic—so did this.

At Harvard-Yale earlier this year, it was Yale quarterback Alvin Cowan whose performance paced the Elis, as he set stratospheric all-time Bulldog records for total offense (466 yards) and passing yards in a game (438).

In the annual hockey match-up, goalie Josh Gartner made 51 saves and looked to be cruising to an easy victory as late as the third period as his team led by a comfortable three goal-margin.

And in that fateful basketball game, there was guard Edwin Draughan, whose 21 points and six assists valiantly tried to suppress the reprisal from this year’s unequivocal Ivy doormat, and almost did in the final seconds.

Today, we have the pleasure of inducting Yale’s men’s lacrosse team to that illustrious list.

Elis Dan Brillman, Ned Britt and Scott Kenworthy collectively scored four unanswered goals to take a 10-8 lead into the fourth and final period, seemingly rolling with the momentum on their side.

But what, again, do all these aforementioned players have in common?

One, they all go to Yale. Two, they all turned in objectively impressive performances. And three, at the hands of their biggest rival—on huge stages, at least for the Ivy League—they all lost.

In spite of all the numbers; in spite of what common sense and predictions might have indicated at the time. Sure, maybe their efforts would have been good enough at another time, and another place, and another opponent, but not then.

As the Harvard basketball team ran off the court that memorable Valentine’s Day with the roar of the crowd still ringing in their ears, I’m confident that they could at least sense this. That they had pulled It off.

Bounding right between the Crimson Dance Team and the palisades of cheerleaders’ pom-poms on either side—a rare feeling for this last season, to say the least—the team was reminded of a fundamental maxim: When these two schools meet, pretty much anything can happen.

I felt that exact feeling again this weekend after hearing about what happened in New Haven thanks to Mike McBride.

For when all was said and done, it was Valentine’s Day and it was Harvard-Yale all over again, for the umpteenth time.

The sport and the venue may have been different, sure.

But in at least one, very real sense, The Game was still very much the same.

—Staff writer Pablo S. Torre can be reached at torre@fas.harvard.edu. His column appears on alternate Mondays.