In Case You Missed It: Men’s Basketball Harvard-Yale!

It finally happened! 

What, you might ask? Bekuo Uzo-Menkiti ’28 had absolutely no excuse to skip the basketball game. I had been trying to convince her to go with me for months! Genuinely, months! 

The first thing you should know about Bekuo is that she is, if nothing else, busy. When she turns my invitation down, it is typically for a good reason: a rehearsal for the Harvard Opportunes, an upcoming Chem 27 exam, or a late-night shift for ECHO. The second thing you should know is that she doesn’t watch sports—a fact that aligns her with the majority of the Harvard student body. 

The stars happened to align so that she would be singing the national anthem on the very night that a media badge awaited me at Lavietes Pavilion. What could be a better game than a Valentine’s Day Harvard-Yale match-up! Both she and I knew that, even if it took an extra-strength roll of duct tape and public humiliation, she was going to watch this game with me—not to spoil the whole article, but I want to clarify that she had a great time, don’t worry! 

On the way over, I joked about the double role I would be playing that evening: of course, the respectable Associate Sports Editor of the “Harvard Independent,” but more importantly, Bekuo’s enthusiastic stage mom. Unsurprisingly, she delivered a stunning performance. But this article is about sports, not her ungodly talent or the 50 audience members that complimented her during our post-game walk to Felipe’s.

Like any good sports fan, I am extremely superstitious. Every home basketball game, I sit in the same spot: 5B, seat 16, center court, close enough to hear what’s being said by players and coaches, unobstructed by the media table. As we sat, Bekuo pointed out that these were purchased seats and we should probably sit in general admission. I laughed. She doesn’t know that turnout is usually so low that seating arrangements follow the same rules as a Southwest Airlines flight. I had sat there just the night before during the Harvard-Brown game, giggling to myself as the students behind me yelled “Kobe! Kobe!” as Michael Jordan’s face flashed on the jumbotron for a game of guess that celebrity. I find it ironic that the smartest students in the world couldn’t identify Michael Jordan, even at a basketball game. 

What I didn’t know was that this game was sold out. I met her courtside following her performance, humbled, because she was right: I had been asked to move by a family who purchased my seat. Although this was more positive than inconvenient, it meant that there was a full audience in attendance. I stepped back and looked around the gym. Lavietes was PACKED—the navy blue was contained to a small section in the upper left corner of the room instead of dominating as it did at the Yale Bowl in November.

At tip-off, I took on the responsibility of telling Bekuo everything she needed to know. The obvious baseline was an introduction to the players of Harvard’s starting roster in terms she could understand: 

“Ok, so that’s No. 15 Thoman Batties ’27, who is pretty much like King Midas, but instead of everything he touches turning to gold, it turns into points.” Batties has a near 50% three-point accuracy on the season and did not embarrass me, scoring 23 points in the game.

“Then we have No. 4 Robert Hinton ’28: all you need to know is he’s pretty much goated.” 

 “No. 5 Ben Eisendrath ’28 kinda plays like if Tom Holland manifested into a 6’2 basketball player instead of Spider-Man.”

“No. 8 Tey Barbour ’28 is sort of a human metronome: consistent, doesn’t miss a beat.” In addition to rounding out the scoring strength of Harvard’s perimeter, I told her you can count on him for rebounds, with 122 on the season. 

“That brings us to No. 13 Chandler Piggé ’26, who, despite how utterly terrifying he seems now, is genuinely the nicest and friendliest person you will ever meet the second he steps off the court.” I told Chandler once that I edited his “Independent” spotlight article. Since then, we have regularly chatted about the team’s games during brain break at Dunster House. Needless to say, he’s a great team captain. 

As the game began, we scanned the crowd, found the two remaining seats in Section Six, and sat down. Having interviewed some of the members in attendance, I chose to selectively withhold the information from Bekuo that we had just sat down sandwiched between the Harvard Football team. If I had learned anything from attending Harvard athletics games, it was that this was the most entertaining place for us to be. The only thing I did not consider was that sitting behind the 6-foot-something O-line is quite possibly the worst place imaginable for a free t-shirt toss. 

Being the good friend I am, I wanted her to have the full sports-watching experience: heckling, that is. The football team undoubtedly delivered. Within the first half, the team collectively decided that their “MVP” for the match was Yale’s No. 14, referred to by them as “SIMMONS, I know you hear me Simmons;” “‘Simmonon’ Stick;” and the endearing “That’s my boyfriend” reserved only for words of affirmation during his free throw attempts—how romantic on Valentine’s Day!  

The heckling was so intense and unrelenting that Bekuo became concerned for Simmons’s mental health. “These athletes have therapists, right?” she asked, to which I responded, “Remind me to never take you to a hockey game; your kind heart won’t survive.” 

If it is any testament to how great this game was, within the next hour, Bekuo went from complaining that the football team was being too mean to standing on the bleachers with them. She screamed every time Harvard scored a point and even yelled “Bullshit” in unison at the referees, who evidently cost us the game with lousy calls in overtime. She got so into the game that with every whistle, I received a “What happened? What was that? Who fouled?” 

By the end, I felt convinced that I had transformed her into a full-fledged sports fan. She even took great excitement in pointing out the score to me with five seconds left in regulation. The game was hilariously tied 66 – 66—one point away from the infamous 67.

Despite the pain it inflicted to lose this game by one point because of a bad call, let alone against Yale, let alone single on Valentine’s Day, it was hands down one of the best games I have ever been to. For a moment, I forgot about the paper I had due at 11:59 p.m. (not an exaggeration: I actually forgot and barely submitted it on time). For a moment, we escaped the stress and the strange meritocratic social division between Harvard students and Harvard athletes and did something simple that most other college students get to do all the time: just had fun.

My best friend, who goes to Duke, couldn’t tell you the first thing about basketball, yet she was willing to sleep outside in a tent for a week to secure tickets to the Duke vs. UNC game. Why? Plain and simple: because it’s fun.

I think it’s high time that Harvard students stopped viewing sports as a frivolous waste of time. After all, the Ivy League was formed from an athletic conference. Sure, we could have spent the time “more efficiently” by completing a p-set, writing a paper, or building a start-up company. But what’s the fun in that? Three words: live a little. 

I probably won’t remember the topic I wrote my paper on in a few months, but I will always remember forcing Bekuo to sit with the football team after she sang the national anthem. 

Megan Legault ’28 (mlegault@college.harvard.edu)still thinks the team lost because she did not sit in her usual seat.