Eight Presidents of the United States. Forty-seven Nobel Prize winners. Forty-seven more Pulitzer Prize recipients.
And one NCAA tournament victory.
Harvard, that bastion of Supreme Court justices, captains of industry and high school valedictorians, continued its rise in men's basketball with a historic 68-62 victory over New Mexico on Thursday in Salt Lake City.
"I'm extremely proud," said coach Tommy Amaker on CBS after the win. "They had to believe. [Before the game] we talked about preparation and we talked about belief."
Generally it takes winning the entire NCAA tournament for a coach to receive a phone call from the sitting president, but in this case it probably wouldn't surprise anyone if Amaker's phone buzzed from the White House as Barack Obama went to law school there.
Amaker is a confident coach however, a man who's been to the big time and has been able to pass on to his players the concept that they are just as good as anyone out there, Ivy League or not.
He's proven to be the perfect Crimson coach. After some success at Seton Hall and Michigan, he's found his niche identifying exceptional students with game and convincing them that they don't have to pass up any athletic dreams in Cambridge. The Crimson took on a Lobos team that spent much of the season ranked in the top 15 and entered the game with a 29-5 record. They won both the Mountain West regular season and tournament championships
And judging by the excited, but hardly over-the-top reaction of Amaker after the victory, the coach doesn't think his team is done. You might as well get used to the Crimson coming for you.
And one NCAA tournament victory.
Harvard, that bastion of Supreme Court justices, captains of industry and high school valedictorians, continued its rise in men's basketball with a historic 68-62 victory over New Mexico on Thursday in Salt Lake City.
"I'm extremely proud," said coach Tommy Amaker on CBS after the win. "They had to believe. [Before the game] we talked about preparation and we talked about belief."Generally it takes winning the entire NCAA tournament for a coach to receive a phone call from the sitting president, but in this case it probably wouldn't surprise anyone if Amaker's phone buzzed from the White House as Barack Obama went to law school there.
Amaker is a confident coach however, a man who's been to the big time and has been able to pass on to his players the concept that they are just as good as anyone out there, Ivy League or not.
He's proven to be the perfect Crimson coach. After some success at Seton Hall and Michigan, he's found his niche identifying exceptional students with game and convincing them that they don't have to pass up any athletic dreams in Cambridge. The Crimson took on a Lobos team that spent much of the season ranked in the top 15 and entered the game with a 29-5 record. They won both the Mountain West regular season and tournament championships
And judging by the excited, but hardly over-the-top reaction of Amaker after the victory, the coach doesn't think his team is done. You might as well get used to the Crimson coming for you.
