Drew Housman, Guard, Harvard Basketball, Class of 2009
Up until about halfway through the 08-09 season it was like having any other teammate. Then we played BC a few days after they had just upset North Carolina, the number one team in the country at the time. No one thought we had a chance. The last time I had played BC was my freshman year, and we got blasted by 30.
We showed up at BC feeling confident as a team, but I think Jeremy was feeling a little something extra. He torched them from start to finish. It felt like he stole every pass and hit every jumper. They simply had no answer for him. The team played well as a whole, but Jeremy was clearly the reason we won the game. We were chanting his name on the shuttle ride home, never imagining that a sold out Madison Square Garden would be doing the same thing a few years later.
He had been the best player on our team for a while, but that game was the first time he showed that he could have been the best player on an ACC team. That is kind of amazing for an Ivy League guy.
Overall he is the best teammate you could ask for. Humble, works hard and plays hard. I can't say I'm that surprised to see what he is doing in the league. His ability to rise to the occasion is uncanny. He did it in high school, winning the state championship over the favored Mater Dei by making big plays in the 4th, he did it in college whenever he played a BCS school (except for Stanford his sophomore year, but that was a disaster across the board) and he is now doing it at the highest level possible. He might have a rough night against Columbia, but against UConn on national TV? 30 points in a near upset. It is really impressive when someone raises his level of play every time the pressure mounts.
Also, I noticed in a game I watched the announcer kept saying that he looked exhausted in the 4th quarter. What he doesn't know is that Jeremy always looks like that. He would appear to be dead tired after 5 minutes of warm ups. No one really knew why, but no one really cared because he would always come out and put in work for 40 minutes.
Via Steven E. Johnston.
Cross-posted from Quora.