Basketball

14 games were not enough to determine the automatic qualifier to the NCAA Tournament, as Princeton and Harvard met for a third time in the league’s first playoff since 2002. Weeks, months, years of practice came down to 2.8 seconds on a Saturday afternoon in March.

It is a commonly known fact that college basketball, particularly at the Division I level, is a lucrative enterprise. CBS and Time Warner bought joint ownership of the NCAA Tournament television rights for $10.8 billion, and athletic departments around the nation dedicate hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to support their programs. Much of the legwork for this fundraising falls on booster and friends groups.

Mitch Henderson '98 will succeed Sydney Johnson '97 as the head coach of the men's basketball team, the Department of Athletics announced on Wednesday.

When Harvard men’s basketball head coach Tommy Amaker announced on Tuesday afternoon that he would not be accepting a job at Miami but would return to the Crimson the following season, Harvard fans around the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. They lauded Amaker for turning down a job reportedly worth over a million dollars per year and hopes for a successful season immediately soared.

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament, known to most people by its most common moniker March Madness, started last Sunday with the announcement of the bracket for the tournament. As bracket-mania quickly overtook the problems in Japan as the hottest news story, I found myself reluctantly persuaded to fill out my own bracket and promised to watch some of the opening second round games with my dad and brother, the college basketball fanatics of the family.