For Harvard, lately Yale’s John J. Lee Amphitheater has been a house of horrors.

“We’ve gotta exorcise some demons with that arena, right?” Oliver McNally said. “The last two times we’ve been there it hasn’t been our greatest endings.”

There was the hard-fought regular-season loss, in which the Crimson fell just short against the Bulldogs when a Brandyn Curry layup bounced out with 1 second remaining in a 70-69 game.

And, of course, there was the back-and-forth playoff loss. That one was even harder to stomach, coming as it did on a Princeton buzzer-beater with the Ivy League’s NCAA tournament berth on the line.

Friday night’s visit to Yale will be the first for the Crimson since that crushing loss. Coach Tommy Amaker said the team’s well aware of that fact; he won’t have to remind them.

“No need to dwell on it,” Amaker said. “It was a great game and it was a tough loss, a heartbreaking loss, but boy did we have fun in terms of that process of that game prior to quote-unquote the ending. I think we’ll be excited to go in there and play.”

Besides, the fifth-year Crimson coach noted, it’s not the same game.

“We’re gonna play Yale, it’s not Princeton,” he said. “It’ll be their home crowd, it won’t be half the building for us as it was when we were down there last time.”

And it’s not the same Harvard team, either. This version is a Top 25 team (ranked No. 23 in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll), a heavy favorite that outsiders believe should be able to run through the Ivy League and reach the NCAAs in March.

After starting Ivy play with two wins against an overmatched Dartmouth team, this weekend the Crimson play their first Ivy back-to-back at Yale on Friday and at Brown on Saturday.

The Crimson are playing with a bull’s-eye on their backs, and have had to learn to expect, take and respond to every team’s best shot.

Yale will be no different. And the Bulldogs are certainly no push-overs.

“I think Yale is an outstanding basketball team,” Amaker said. “They’re a little under the radar. We’re excited.”

Yale is led by senior forward Greg Mangano, who is in the top 20 nationally in scoring and rebounding, averaging 19.4 points and 10.3 rebounds per game.

“He’s a tough guard, a tough cover because of his size,” Amaker said of the 6-foot-10, 240-pound Mangano. “He can really shoot it from the outside. He’s obviously an interior player, he’s leading our league in scoring and rebounding. He’s been a very good player throughout his time at Yale.

“He’s obviously a force to deal with and we’ll have to help and do a lot of things, but I’m not sure we’re gonna be able to stop him. … There’s a lot of ways he can have an impact, so I don’t know that we can eliminate that, hopefully we can contain it and not allow him to have career nights.”

While Keith Wright and Kyle Casey will probably draw the majority of the defensive assignments on the big man, Amaker said help defense will be important, as well.

The Crimson will also have to ensure that Austin Morgan and Reggie Willhite don’t go off on them if they’re too focused on Mangano.

“It’s not a one-man show there,” Amaker said. “They’re a very good basketball team. They’re sound in a lot of ways.”

With all the history between the teams, recent and otherwise, there will be no lack of motivation for either side Friday.

“It’s Harvard-Yale so whatever sport it’s in, it holds a little more meaning,” McNally said. “Against a team that’s favored to be finishing up at the top, yeah you go in really hyped up and ready to go. But hopefully I think we have a mature team that’s gonna come in as focused for that game as we did against Dartmouth and the other teams we play in the league.”

That even-keeled approach is important for the Crimson, because as they found out in breathtaking fashion last season the only sure way to avoid a potential house of horrors is to stay on the winning path.

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.