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“Harvard's Futility”

More than a day has passed and I still find myself watching and re-watching Doug Davis’s buzzer-beater in some kind of enraptured tigerblooded trance. I quickly tired of the original version, though, and hungered for more. Fortunately the Internets are very good at indulging this kind of inane curiosity; tons of alternate angles cropped up all over YouTube and I watched as many of them as I could. I’ve gathered here a few of my favorite perspectives on what shall hereafter be known as “The Shot.” Consider this UPC’s version of that movie Vantage Point, only not awful, not with Dennis Quaid, and nobody dies. Except maybe the Harvard fan who issued that bloodcurdling shriek. Just continue reading to find out what I meant by the purposefully cryptic previous sentence!

Classic View, but Clearer

This is the same ESPN footage as the original, but in way better quality, and, inexplicably, with several thousand fewer views. (Perhaps there’s something to be said for capturing a classic gem of Princetoniana in grainy and choppy fashion.) Anyway, this is the most traditional view of the madness, and easily the most addictive — I could watch it all day, savoring every frame. Davis’s vicious pump fake with his right leg splayed out to the side. The tragic, balletic leap of Harvard #11 as he bites so, so hard on said pump fake. Davis pulling up for the leaner, letting loose. My man in the tie standing in the far corner calling it before anyone else (see 0:18), as one astute YouTube commenter observed. Davis falling over. The ball falling in. The sea of white and orange collapsing onto Davis, who’s already found a suitable seat on the floor. Gratuitous shots of orange morph suits. Fist-pumping aplenty. Which is all to say, timeless.

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Mmmmm. Bill Bradley.

Enjoy it, Cornell. We've been here before.

After the boys from Ithaca crushed their Crimson cousins Saturday night by a score of 86-50, Cornell moved into the top 25 in the ESPN/USA Today coaches’ poll for the top teams in college basketball.

This is a big deal for Ivy League basketball. The Ancient Eight haven’t had a ranked team since back when I was in the second grade, otherwise known as the 1997-1998 season.

(And who was that team? The Princeton Tigers of course.)

It’s been a good run for Cornell basketball. They’ve made the NCAA tournament the last two years, and it looks like they’ll be headed back to the big dance.

We’re actually  a little intimidated. Basketball used to be our thing, our defining sport. Cornell has now officially seized that mantle. And we can’t even take comfort in our new(er) sport of dominance, lacrosse, because Cornell bounced us from the NCAA tournament last year.

So instead we’ll do what we always do in these situations: hearken back to our glorious past, and remind the young up and comers who still stands dominant in the annals of Ivy League Basketball history (other than Penn).

(This also gives us the opportunity to make fun of Harvard’s impressive ZERO men’s basketball Ivy League titles. And making fun of Harvard always makes us feel better.)

Full feel-good historical standings after the jump!

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