The Harvard Crimson men's basketball program represents intercollegiate men's basketball at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. The team currently competes in the

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...

in Division I of the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

(NCAA) and plays home games at the

Lavietes Pavilion The Ray Lavietes Basketball Pavilion at the Briggs Athletic Center is a 1,636-seat multi-purpose arena in the Allston neighborhood of Boston. Owned by Harvard University, it is the second-oldest college basketball arena still in use ( Fordham Uni ...

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

. The Crimson are currently coached by

Tommy Amaker Harold Tommy Amaker Jr. (; born June 6, 1965) is an American college basketball coach and the head coach of the Harvard University men's basketball team. He has also coached for the University of Michigan and Seton Hall University. He played po ...

History

Tommy Amaker era

On April 11, 2007, Tommy Amaker was named men's basketball coach at

. On January 7, 2009, Amaker's Harvard squad defeated then-

ranked A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two items, the first is either "ranked higher than", "ranked lower than" or "ranked equal to" the second. In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of ...

Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...

(#17

AP Poll The Associated Press poll (AP poll) provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 sportswriters and broad ...

/#24 Coaches' Poll) for the first win over a ranked team in the program's history. The following season, after Amaker coached Harvard to its most successful season ever behind the play of Jeremy Lin, the 2009–10 team was invited to participate in the 2010 CollegeInsider.com Tournament. The team was defeated in the first round by . Amaker led the 2010-11 team to a share of the 2010–11 Ivy League men's basketball season championship, which was school's first men's basketball Ivy League Championship since the league was formed during the 1956–57 season. Harvard finished the season a perfect 14–0 at home, which surpassed the prior season's school record of eleven home wins. The team's 12 conference game wins established a school record. The team's victory over

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

was the team's first ever against a

Big 12 Conference The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its ...

opponent since that conference commenced play in 1996. His fourth season also marked the fourth straight season that the team defeated at least one power conference opponent. By finishing as Ivy League Co-champion, they faced

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

in a one-game playoff and lost by a score of 63–62. Harvard earned an automatic bid to the 2011 National Invitation Tournament, but was defeated by by a 71–54 margin in the first round. The final record of 23–7 surpassed the prior season's total of 21 wins for the most in the history of the program. The team appeared in the

NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, branded as NCAA March Madness and commonly called March Madness, is a single-elimination tournament played each spring in the United States, currently featuring 68 college basketball teams from ...

in 2014, where Harvard upset 5-seed

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

61–57 before being eliminated in the round of 32 by 4-seed

Michigan State Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the first of its kind in the United States. It i ...

by a score of 80–73. In 2015, Harvard tied with

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

for the Ivy title with an 11–3 league record. Despite having lost to Yale 62–52 at

on March 6, 2015, just eight days later Harvard won a playoff between the two at the

Palestra The Palestra, often called the Cathedral of College Basketball, is a historic arena and the home gym of the Penn Quakers men's and women's basketball teams, volleyball teams, wrestling team, and Philadelphia Big 5 basketball. Located at 235 South ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

to determine the Ivy League's NCAA automatic bid by a score of 53–51. Harvard thereby achieved its fourth straight NCAA tournament appearance while extending Yale's 53-year NCAA tournament appearance drought. Harvard was eliminated from the 2015 NCAA tournament by UNC by a score of 67–65 after leading with under one minute to play in the game. At the conclusion of the 2018 season, Amaker's record at Harvard stood at 230-131.

Financial aid and recruiting

Another key to Harvard's recent success in basketball has been a 2006 change in the school's financial aid policy. Although the Ivy League strictly prohibits

athletic scholarship An athletic scholarship is a form of scholarship to attend a college or university or a private high school awarded to an individual based predominantly on his or her ability to play in a sport. Athletic scholarships are common in the United ...

s, Harvard has adopted an aid scheme that makes the school far more accessible to low- and middle-income students. Under current policy, all students (not just athletes) from families with annual incomes less than $180,000 pay at most 10% of family income, and those with family incomes under $60,000 receive full scholarships. According to Jay Hart of

Yahoo! Sports Yahoo! Sports is a sports news website launched by Yahoo! on December 8, 1997. It receives a majority of its information from STATS, Inc. It employs numerous writers, and has team pages for teams in almost every North American major sport. B ...

With the financial barrier to entry lifted, an offer to play basketball at Harvard became instantly competitive with the rest of the world of collegiate athletics, where full-ride scholarships are (purportedly) the only currency.

Postseason results

NCAA tournament results

The Crimson have appeared in the

five times. Their combined record is 2–6. Until their appearance in the Tournament in 2012, they had gone 66 years without making an appearance, the longest drought in NCAA history.

NIT results

The Crimson have appeared in the National Invitation Tournament three times. Their combined record is 1–3.

CIT results

The Crimson have appeared in the

CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament The CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament (CIT) was an American men's college basketball postseason tournament founded by Collegeinsider.com. The tournament was oriented toward schools that did not get selected for the NCAA Division I men's ...

once. Their record is 0–1.

Notable players

Crimson in the National Basketball Association

Bold denotes active player.A player is considered inactive if he has announced his retirement or not played for a full season. *

Wyndol Gray Wyndol Woodrow Gray (March 30, 1922 – March 20, 1994) was an American professional basketball player. He was the brother of Cortez Gray, who was also a professional basketball player. Gray played at Akron South High School in Akron, Ohio and we ...

* Jeremy Lin *

Saul Mariaschin Saul William Marsch (born Saul George Mariaschin; August 10, 1924 – December 20, 1990) was an American professional basketball player. He played college basketball at Syracuse University for one season in 1942–43 before leaving to join the Un ...

* Ed Smith

Crimson in international leagues

Lou Silver Louis Grant Silver (born November 27, 1953) is an American-Israeli businessperson, attorney, and former professional basketball player. He played in the Israeli Basketball Premier League. Silver received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1975, hi ...

Notes

References

External links

* {{Ivy League men's basketball navbox