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Harvard, UMass to Open College Basketball Season in Amherst as Part of ESPN’s Tip-Off Marathon

Apparently, Harvard's basketball team is still reaping the benefits of Linsanity and its most famous former player.

The Crimson are set to take on the UMass Minutemen as part of ESPN's College Hoops Tip-Off Marathon this coming season. The game will be played in Amherst on Nov. 13 at 10 a.m., the sixth of 11 games on ESPN that day.

Coincidentally, UMass was also a participant in the inaugural Tip-Off Marathon in 2008. They played Memphis in a game that tipped at midnight, the first of 14 contests that day.

Harvard is coming off a 2011-12 season that saw the team post a sterling 26-5 record — setting the school record for wins — and earn a 12-seed in the NCAA tournament, where they lost to fifth-seeded Vanderbilt in the second round.

UMass, meanwhile, had a decent season of its own, finishing up at 25-12 and in a four-way tie for fifth in the Atlantic-10 Conference. They earned a berth to the NIT and made it all the way to the semifinals at Madison Square Garden before losing to Stanford.

The game will mark the 25th meeting between the two teams. UMass holds the all-time edge, 14-10, and won the last meeting in 1991 by 35 points.