At this point, the shifting scenarios, the twisted nerves, the suffocating pressure, and the intense scoreboard-watching are all a part the last weekend of the Ivy League schedule for Harvard.
It’s been that way the past four years.
In 2012, it wasn’t enough that the Crimson had to go on the road the final weekend of the season and beat Columbia and Cornell to finish 26-4 overall and 12-2 in the Ivy. They had to wait until Tuesday to see whether Princeton would do them a favor and knock off Penn, guaranteeing their first outright Ivy League title in more than six decades.
The next year, they went into the last weekend backs to the wall after dropping both games on a trip through Princeton and Penn. They bounced back with wins over Columbia and Cornell to finish 19-9, 11-3.
But as soon as the buzzer went off in their win over the Big Red, they rushed to the locker room to watch the last eight minutes of the Princeton-Brown game. It wasn’t until Brown finished off Princeton that they could exhale with another Ivy League championship.
Last year, they had to go into Payne Whitney Gymnasium, where the hostility couldn’t have been much higher, and knock off Yale to clinch a third straight crown.
Now that same Yale team is ostensibly the only thing between them and a fourth straight trip to the NCAA Tournament, and the only thing Crimson coach Tommy Amaker wants from his team Friday night at Lavietes Pavilion is to understand that they’ve been in this situation before and to treat it the same way they always have.
“They know the significance,” Amaker said. “We’ve had multiple games that these kids have played in that have had significant meaning, other games that we’ve had to participate in that allowed them to be champions.’’
“I don’t think I have to emphasize to them or make them understand the importance of this or that. They know.”
Yale coach James Jones knew the magnitude of this game the first time he saw it on the schedule.
As startling as the news was when Harvard fell to Cornell a week ago creating a tie atop the Ivy, Jones had the final meeting with Harvard pinpointed as the game that would decide the league.
“I told the guys that it was always going to come down to this weekend,” Jones said. “I felt that in my heart. I didn’t think either team was going to be good enough to separate itself from the other enough where this weekend wouldn’t matter.”
Not much has separated the teams the past two years. They were both sitting at 8-1 deep into league play last season, when a high ankle sprain sidelined Yale’s top perimeter threat Javier Duren for two games and sent the Bulldogs scrambling.
Yale lost back-to-back games to Columbia and Princeton, giving ground to the Crimson.
When Duren returned, he wasn’t the same player who led the team in assists, steals and 3-pointers. He shot 6 of 41 in the final four games of the regular season, including an 0-for-11 night against Harvard in the game that clinched the title.
“So I look at that time and say, ‘Well geez, if he wasn’t injured what would we have been able to do,’ ” Jones said. “I felt like our chances were pretty good.”
Eventually, James Jones had to box up all the untimely injuries, the lingering what-ifs, and all the derailed potential team had stored away last season and put it behind him.
“No sense crying over spilled milk,” Jones said. “It’s gone.”
Amaker never allows himself to look too far behind or ahead.
The thought of the final weekend deciding his team’s fate didn’t cross his mind, he said, until it got here.
“Honestly, it didn’t because I know how wacky and how things can go in all sort of different directions being in it as long as I have, and I’m sure for James as well,” Amaker said. “We’ve seen so many different scenarios play themselves out because people are thinking about what’s going to happen in two weeks or three weeks or this team, that team. We’ve been at our best and it’s been healthy for us to absolutely discard those kinds of scenarios and/or thoughts.”
Losing the leadership — and scoring — that came from seniors Kyle Casey, Brandyn Curry, and Laurent Rivard left Amaker with other things to think about. While the Crimson’s defense is the most stifling in the Ivy, their offense has gone from pumping out a league-high 73.6 points a year ago to mustering just 64.8 points per game this season.
“We’ve got enough trying to figure out how can we get a good shot against a zone,” Amaker said. “So we’ve got enough to focus our attention other than what the thing could look like in two weeks or three weeks.”
Even though the Crimson came into the season ranked No. 25 in the country, scoring was a concern for Amaker. Jones realized it would be an issue for Harvard too.
“[Casey, Curry and Rivard] are three of the best players that have ever put on a uniform in the Ivy Leagues,” Jones said. “And certainly when you have that kind of loss, you’re going to be a different team.
“Now this year’s version of the Harvard team is just — they’re just not as good offensively as they have been in the past. The fact that Kenyatta Smith went down, he’s really their best low-post scorer. He’s coming back now off that knee injury, but that even changed them a bit more. So this team just isn’t as good offensively, but they’re much better defensively.”
With the Ivy’s top offense, third best defense, second-best 3-point shooting team and second-best rebounding team, Yale is as balanced as any Ivy League opponent Harvard’s faced.
Numbers aside, the rivalry stands on its own. In the past two years, across all athletic programs, Harvard and Yale have faced each other seven times with at least a share of the Ivy League championship on the line.
“Obviously we’ve had a number of really good ball games against them,” Amaker said. “That’s to be expected. Whatever it is about Harvard and Yale locking heads in whatever sport or whatever circumstance, it generally turns out to be something interesting and/or entertaining.”
Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @julianbenbow.