In Ivy's Golden Age, Elite Universities With Teams to Match In the fall of 1969, two of the nation's top high school basketball players spurned offers from more than 100 N.C.A.A. Division I programs of the day to attend Harvard. For James Brown and Floyd Lewis, the Ivy League was no different from the Atlantic Coast Conference or the Big Ten in terms of achieving their ultimate goal: playing in the N.B.A. "Going to the N.B.A. from the Ivy League was not a reach back in those days," said Brown, who was drafted in the fourth round in 1973. I went to Harvard, but I wanted to play in the N.B.A. I thought I could there. I was drafted by Atlanta, but it didn't happen, and I have no one to blame but myself. The recent success of another Harvard graduate, Jeremy Lin of the Knicks, has cast a light on basketball in the eight-team Ivy League, which does not permit athletic scholarships. Nowadays, N.B.A. players from the Ivy League are a rarity; Lin, who was not drafted, is the first since 2003. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the top Ivy teams were among the best in the country. Bill Bradley set the table at Princeton, taking the underdog Tigers to the 1965 Final Four. The next year, the top prospect Geoff Petrie spurned offers from North Carolina, Duke and Michigan to follow in Bradley's footsteps. Four years later, Petrie was Portland's first-round draft pick and shared rookie of the year honors with Dave Cowens of the Boston Celtics. Petrie played six years in the N.B.A. and appeared in two All-Star Games. He twice scored 51 points in a game (three months apart in 1973 against the same team, Houston). The Trail Blazers retired his No. "Princeton was playing at a very high level back then," Petrie said in a telephone interview, "and there was the opportunity to play good basketball and get a good education. We played U.C.L.A., North Carolina, Duke, Michigan in our nonconference games. A total of 35 Ivy players were drafted from 1965 to 1976, including 14 in the first three rounds. In 1968, the year before Brown and Lewis committed to Harvard, Princeton had five players who went on to be drafted by N.B.A. teams. The year after Brown and Lewis committed, 3 of the top 15 overall draft picks were from the Ivy League: Petrie (No. 8), Columbia's Jim McMillian (No. 13, by the Los Angeles Lakers) and Princeton's John Hummer (No. 15, by Buffalo). All were selected ahead of the future Hall of Famers Nate Archibald and Calvin Murphy. From 1970 to 1976, six first-round N.B.A. draft picks came from the Ivy League. In addition to Petrie, McMillian and Hummer, the others were Penn's Corky Calhoun (1972) and Bob Bigelow (1975) and Princeton's Armond Hill (1976). Calhoun holds the distinction as the highest regular pick in an N.B.A. draft, going fourth over all to Phoenix in 1972. Bradley was a territorial selection by the Knicks in 1965. Two years after Bradley left Princeton, the Tigers finished the season ranked No. 5 in the country. Columbia, led by McMillian, Heyward Dotson and Dave Newmark, ended the 1967-68 season with a 23-5 record and No. 7 national ranking. The Lions finished the next season ranked No. Penn was ranked No. 13 in 1970, the year before fielding perhaps the best team in the history of the league. "It was a legitimate league back then," said Dick Harter, who coached the powerhouse Penn team in 1970-71. The tuition wasn't as high, so you could compete for guys. We competed and got Jimmy Wolf out of Ohio. We competed and got Corky Calhoun out of Illinois. Both of those guys were among the best players in their states. Penn had title aspirations in 1970-71. It won its first 28 games, then lost to Villanova, 90-47, in the East Regional final of the N.C.A.A. tournament. Penn had beaten Villanova in the regular season and ended up ranked No. 3, behind U.C.L.A., the N.C.A.A. champion, and Marquette. Penn also ended at No. 3 the next season, when it was coached by the future Hall of Famer Chuck Daly, who had left his job at Boston College to take over the Quakers. That team, too, lost in the East Regional final. Penn made it to the 1979 Final Four but was not generally considered as strong as the 1969-70 team, which lost twice; the 1970-71 team; or the 1971-72 team, which lost three games. "I still honestly feel that that 1971 team was the greatest team in Ivy League history," Harter said. Of course, I'm biased. And I still can't explain what happened that day we lost to Villanova. But we were one game from the Final Four, and I think we could have handled Western Kentucky. U.C.L.A. was strong with Wicks and Rowe," he said, referring to Sidney Wicks and Curtis Rowe, "but it wasn't one of their great teams. I really think we would have beaten them. Nowadays, a national title is mostly out of the question for an Ivy League team, and N.B.A. talent in the league is rare. Lin played in the N.B.A. Development League, and was cut by two N.B.A. teams before catching on with the Knicks. He was just as unheralded coming out of high school, receiving no Division I scholarship offers. But two generations ago, the situation was much different. Lewis still holds the Harvard record for rebounds in a season (343, in 1970-71), and Brown holds the team mark for field goals made in one game (18, in 1973 against Boston University). Brown is a familiar face on CBS, anchoring the network's N.F.L. coverage. Lewis is a lawyer in the Washington area. They each chose Harvard to try to win the Crimson's first Ivy League championship, then move on to the N.B.A. They did neither. But theirs were not pipe dreams. "I know for me, the N.B.A. was an expectation," Lewis said. Other Ivy League schools had sent kids to the N.B.A. Why not Harvard? That's what James and I both thought.