It finally came down to the end of regulation, with the score knotted at 63-all. Senior point James White waited until the clock wound down to six, and then drove into the lane. Grancio rotated to the top of the key and had an open shot, but missed it.
"[Grancio] is a very good and talented three-point shooter," Sullivan said, "and he was one of the options on the play."
Everything went well, except the ball didn't go in.
The overtime sessions were a lesson in futility. In the first period, each team could only muster two points in five minutes, and Snowden could not hit the last-second shot from under the basket--one of only two misses for him out of nine shots.
In the second overtime, the Crimson's Achilles heel was its free throw shooting. Harvard went to the line eight times, and only hit two of the shots. That won't win you many games.
Yet again, Harvard had the ball with the clock winding down, but this time it came with the Crimson down by two. Princeton put heavy pressure on the ball, and the only shot that Harvard could muster was a Grancio three-pointer that he didn't have a good look to the basket on.
It missed, and Princeton got the rebound, essentially ending the game.
Earth-Quakers
The Penn game was not nearly as exciting, except for the fact that everyone in Briggs cage on Friday night had the chance to be on SportsChannel.
Harvard gave the Quakers no mighty scare like it did in last year's 66-65 Penn win. Harvard took an early 3-0 lead on one of junior Mike Gilmore's five three-pointers, but watched Penn blitz out to a 22-7 lead by the midway point of the first half.
The Crimson, to its credit, held down the fort for the rest of the first half and actually got the lead down to nine at one point before going to the locker rooms down by 11. When the second half started, Penn was yet again on the warpath.
"We could have easily gone into the half down by 15," Gilmore said. "But we didn't, and the halftime did take a little momentum out of us."
The result was not pretty.
It took less than five minutes for Penn to extend its lead to 54-36, and Harvard never got within shouting distance of the Quakers again.
"When you get on a roll early on, it's tough to come back," Penn guard Matt Maloney said, showing some modesty.
Penn is simply a good team, no two ways about it. At the moment it unquestionably belongs in the top 25.
"What we saw was a model of how much better they are," Sullivan said. "They're just terrific--they're playing at a different level than the rest of us."