That Defining Moment: UConn 67, Harvard 53

It happened right in front of me. The famous Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges once wrote that there is “a single moment—the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.” While smaller in scope than what Borges imagined, most basketball games, too, have one moment that define them, a moment we often cannot anticipate. It may come in the opening minutes of a blowout, or on the last play of the game. Tonight, it happened five feet from my seat on the baseline of a sold out Gampel Pavilion. Harvard’s athletic wing Kyle Casey slipped away from his defender with a clear lane to the rim. The pass found his hands and he gathered himself for the leap, coiling for a signature dunk. And he dropped the ball. UConn’s Jeremy Lamb picked it up, pushed the ball in transition and found freshman sensation Andre Drummond for a dunk thrown down with so much visceral force that the shot clock swayed and finally tilted itself left, as if acknowledging Drummond’s feat. Before Casey’s turnov...