The wait is finally over for the Yale men’s basketball team. For the first time since 1962, the Bulldogs have reached the NCAA Tournament after a 71-55 win over Columbia Saturday night in Manhattan.

John F. Kennedy was president then, and Bruce Channel’s “Hey! Baby” topped the Billboard charts.

James Jones has coached this Yale team for the last 17 years, going 236-237 during his tenure. He would have been let go a long time ago by other programs, but he’s still there and has, at long last, achieved this goal for a prestigious school that has long been considered a basketball afterthought.

“I took this job over 17 years ago, and I’ve worked daily to get us to where we are today,” Jones said after his team improved to 21-6 on the season and 13-1 in conference play. “It’s certainly a relief, and a joyous time for Yale basketball.”

Senior forward Brandon Sherrod has had quite the interesting collegiate career. He was the school’s rookie of the year in 2011-12, taking a year off from the program (and the school) last season to travel with the elite college a cappella group, the Whiffenpoofs. Since he withdrew from the school, Sherrod maintained his athletic eligibility to make one last attempt at reaching the big dance this year.

“You look up in the gym when we’re at home and you see the last time we got to the tournament being 1962 and it really motivates you to win,” Sherrod told The Comeback. “I think every college basketball player coming in wants to go to the big dance. It’s a great time for our school, a great time for our team.”

Sophomore guard Makai Mason, who led all scorers with 22 points on Saturday, said that alums lingered and remained on the court well after the game was over, savoring the moment the team has waited over half a century to achieve.

“It was really nice to be able to share that moment with them,” Mason told The Comeback.

After what happened the season Sherrod was away, this conference title was especially sweet. In the final game of the 2014-15 regular season, the Bulldogs blew a late lead to Harvard and was forced to play a one-game playoff against the archrival Crimson to determine the league’s automatic bid. Yale lost.

“We didn’t really mention it, but it was in the back of our minds,” Mason said.

Though Jones said he didn’t talk about it with his team even once this year, last season’s collapse clearly stuck with the players and gave them the spark to play with a necessary sense of urgency.

“Last year they dealt with unbelievable disappointment at the end of the season,” said Columbia head coach Kyle Smith. “They responded the right way.”

In an ironic twist, Yale was able to clinch the outright conference championship with Harvard’s helping hand. The Bulldogs were on pace to face Princeton in yet another one-game playoff, but the Tigers were upset by Harvard on Friday night. After finding out the Princeton result on their phones, the Bulldog players raucously celebrated on the team bus on the way down to New York City, knowing that they could end the 54-year drought with just one more victory.

The energy Yale had on that bus remained with the team from the opening tip on Saturday night. The Bulldogs got out to a commanding 17-3 lead and took a 41-27 advantage into halftime on Columbia’s senior night.

“From the opening tip and the first few possessions, I knew we were going to be successful,” Jones said.

Columbia got within 49-45 with 9:03 left in the second half, but got no closer to derailing Yale’s storybook season.

“We just treated each game like our championship,” senior forward Justin Sears told The Comeback. “It’s great for coach Jones to finally get it. More importantly, it’s great for the program overall.”

Though not everyone on campus may be as happy as the players to break the nearly five and a half decade NCAA drought. Sears said the win on Saturday was especially sweet given the controversy surrounding the program over the last few weeks. Senior captain Jack Montague withdrew from the team in February under undisclosed circumstances, though his father reportedly told the New Haven Register he had been expelled from school. Some around the New Haven campus believe his withdrawal was due to sexual assault, and posters aimed at the men’s basketball said “stop silencing women,” were put up around the school.

There were also messages on lecture hall blackboards accusing the school of having and maintaining a “rape culture.” To say the situation has divided some on campus is an extreme understatement, though the close-knit basketball team has been staunchly in Montague’s corner.

Players wore t-shirts with Montague’s nickname Gucci before the team’s nationally televised home game against Harvard on Feb. 26. The team reportedly FaceTimed with Montague before the Columbia game, but that could not be confirmed. The protests haven’t been just on Yale’s campus either, as the staff at Columbia asked their spirit groups to “be sensitive” to the situation during the game. Some members of the Columbia student body stood in protest, per the Yale Daily News, and until the situation is either fully resolved or more comes to light, it’s something that may hang over this Yale team as the spotlight of the NCAA Tournament begins to shine on them.

“It’s not something we talk about,” Jones said when asked about the situation. “We coach basketball and play basketball, and deal with guys that are in the room and do the best we can.”

The players on this team have not used it as a distraction, and are confident that Yale can win a game or two in the NCAA Tournament. Yale played Duke, SMU, USC and Albany this season in non-conference play, so the team has a sense of what they will face when paired against stronger programs.

“We do three things: We defend our behinds off, we block out and rebound like nobody’s business and we share the ball,” Jones said.

Yale’s season has sparked a level of pride with alumni that hasn’t been there, at least for the basketball team, in most of their lifetimes. Now, they will finally have a team of their own to cheer during this year’s tournament, something Jones didn’t take lightly.

”The greatest thing about this is that there are people all over the country that are cheering right now,” Jones said. “We don’t know them specifically. We haven’t talked to them, but I know that they’ve been with us.”

For Jones, the seniors on this team and the program as a whole, they’ve finally attained their ultimate goal.

“We spend more time with each other than we spend with our families,” Jones said. “It’s a great feeling to know that we finished something that we started, and did it with the people that you love.”

(Lead image via Mike McLaughlin/YaleBulldogs.com)

About Shlomo Sprung

Shlomo Sprung is a writer and columnist for Awful Announcing. He's also a senior contributor at Forbes and writes at FanSided, SI Knicks, YES Network and other publications.. A 2011 graduate of Columbia University’s Journalism School, he has previously worked for the New York Knicks, Business Insider, Sporting News and Major League Baseball. You should follow him on Twitter.