It may have been Senior Night, but the final men's basketball game of the 2000-01 season instead provided a glimpse of the future of the Harvard program.

Senior captain Dan Clemente, one of the most prolific offensive scorers in Harvard's history, scored 30 points Friday night against Columbia but took a backseat against Cornell and finished with a solid 17 points and 10 rebounds.

Meanwhile, his younger teammates were having career nights in the 93-84 win over the Big Red. Sophomore guard Pat Harvey, breaking out of a horrific slump over the past few weeks, embarrassed his defenders by going 6-of-6 from three-point land and picking up a career-best 26 points.

And big man Brian Sigafoos, or "FOOS!" for short, completed his surprising run from junior varsity to the starting lineup by scoring a career-high 17 points.

But this weekend was not really about the future. Rather, the Crimson's two final games at home were attempts to salvage a season gone awry, a season that had started with so much promise but instead fell flat on its face in two short weeks.

Having played itself right out of Ivy League championship contention, Harvard hosted Columbia and Cornell hoping to send off Clemente and fellow senior Bryan Parker with a few more good memories.

"I think there's been tremendous pressure on the guys," Harvard Coach Frank Sullivan said. "The losing streak [five games coming into the weekend]... is the first real adversity the team has had all year long. Dan, as the most significant player, was putting additional pressure on himself to get us through the woods."

Clemente returned to the friendly confines of Lavietes Pavilion and it was as if he had never left after the Penn-Princeton home weekend, as if the last four games had never happened.