It's not often Harvard has a chance to win the Ivy League title in men's basketball. In fact, the country's oldest institution of higher learning last won the Ivy League in ...

"We've never won the Ivy League," said Keith Wright, Harvard's leading scorer and rebounder who starred at Norfolk Collegiate.

Never. Now that's a long time.

And yet, if the Crimson can knock off Penn and Princeton on back-to-back nights beginning Friday, Wright and his teammates can set themselves up for a potential one-game playoff with Princeton and earn the league's automatic berth to the NCAA tournament.

It would mark Harvard's first trip to the NCAAs since 1946, eight years before the Ivy League came into existence.

"I'm not making plans for spring break," Wright said. "I'm planning on playing basketball."

Big words from a big guy who has become everything Harvard coach Tommy Amaker hoped for when he recruited Wright three years ago.

The 6-foot-8, 240-pounder is averaging 15.2 points, 8.8 rebounds and 1.6 blocks, and is shooting 57.7 percent from the field. That ranks him in the top three in all four categories in the Ivy League.

Harvard, meanwhile, is making history with just about every passing game this season. The Crimson are 21-5 overall and have tied the school's season record for victories. Harvard ranks No. 44 nationally in the ratings percentage index and boasts a home win over Colorado and road win over Boston College.

And yet, Harvard men's basketball has always played the foil to Princeton, a program so rich in tradition that it has an offense named after it, and Penn, the last Ivy League team to reach the Final Four, in 1979.

Harvard's game Saturday with Princeton is important enough that the ESPN3 broadcast is being shown live from Lavietes Pavilion on the Harvard campus.

Lavietes seats just 2,195 and is the second-oldest gym in use in the NCAA behind Fordham University's. How old is it? Legendary Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams used to stop by and hit in the batting cages there.

"It's smaller than many of the high school gyms I played in," said Wright, the 2008 Tidewater Conference Player of the Year. "I'm sure the energy level will be surreal."

Wright calls it a great place to play a home game. The Crimson are 10-0 there this season. But as Wright points out, there's something missing at Lavietes.

"I come in this gym and there's a bunch of banners on the women's side," Wright said, "and no banners on the men's side."

Coming out of high school, Wright was a shade short for the big-time programs to pursue, but good enough and smart enough to earn a look from all eight Ivy League schools. He settled on Harvard, which has produced seven U.S. presidents and ranks second in the world for educational value behind Cambridge in Great Britain.

It's a unique school with its own twist on the college tongue. Instead of majors, Harvard students have concentrations. And at Harvard, you pride yourself on which campus house you reside in, much like Harry Potter's Hogwarts Academy, where it means something to be in Gryffindor.

Wright resides in Leverett. His concentration is psychology. And Beantown, where the Boston Celtics rule most basketball conversations, has been a good fit for the kid from Suffolk.

"I worked Paul Pierce's summer camp last summer, and I guess I resemble him because a lot of the campers were asking me if I was his brother," Wright said of the Celtics' All-Star forward. "I think I had more fun than the campers did. I got to play against Paul one-on-one. He missed his first shot, I made mine and the place erupted."

Harvard (10-2 in the Ivy and a half-game behind Princeton) could have put itself in the driver's seat last weekend, but lost 70-69 at Yale. Wright was less than stellar in that game, finishing 3 for 12 from the field and scoring just 12 points.

"Keith really struggled until the second half, when he got to the foul line," Amaker said. "Our production up front was very limited and that really hurt us."

And yet, Wright has a second chance to make right.

After missing parts of his freshman and sophomore years with mononucleosis and an Achilles' injury, this appears to be Wright's time to shine. And as Cornell proved last season by advancing to the Sweet Sixteen, Ivy League teams can make some noise from time to time in the NCAA tournament.

Getting there is Harvard's big challenge.

"It's going to be huge and we all know that," Wright said. "I plan on taking a moment and soaking it all in. I have goose bumps right now thinking about it. Penn and Princeton are Ivy League basketball tradition."

Something Wright wants Harvard to be.

Rich Radford, (757) 446-2463, rich.radford@pilotonline.com