Harvard Basketball: New Era Dawns

Harvard is a university which respects tradition, and Harvard basketball teams during the past half-century have sedulously lived up to a tradition of badness. The team has had five winning seasons in the last 25 years. In Ivy League competition, the Crimson's finest performance in history came in 1906, when the squad compiled a 6-4 record to finish in undisputed possession of third place.

Lack of individual talent has rarely been the team's most pressing problem. The quintet annually has shown repeated flashes of ability, but has methodically blown games whenever victory seemed imminent.

Something is different this year. The basektball team is exciting to watch--and they're winning.

The first indication that 1963 might be the turning point came in the team's second game of the season against Wesleyan. The Crimson was trailing by 10 points--nothing too surprising--but rallied to win in the final half-minute of play. That hadn't happened in years.

When the quintet took on powerful Northeastern two weeks ago, it looked as if things had returned to normal: Harvard amassed a 12-point lead and blew it in five minutes. But the team bounded back in the final three minutes of the game and upset the Huskies, 64 to 61.

The team has a lot of exciting ball-players on it. The best of the bunch is probably Captain Bob ("The Stork") Inman. The 6-5 senior does just about everything well; he has a deadly jump shot from the corner, is very effective under the boards, and plays brilliantly on defense.

Leading scorer is husky Merie McClung. He has shown occasional weakness on defense, but whenever the "Big M" gets the ball under the basket, nobody can stop him, not even men several inches taller.

The third member of the Crimson front line is sophomore Barry Williams. It's a delight to watch Williams rebound or shoot--even when he misses, which isn't too often.

Unfortunately, the big three have no bench support, and this is the team's most salient weakness. Fran Martin, 6-6, is the leading reserve; he can rebound well, but can't shoot.

Harvard's first string guards are good but much less flashy than the other three starters. Al Bornheimer and Leo Scully occasionally have hot-shooting nights, but second-string backcourt man Keith Sedlacek is a consistent scoring threat whenever he gets into the game.

No one, however, is claiming that the Crimson has great personnel. Even Harvard's pre-season publicity releases didn't say that this was a particularly good team ("The best the team can hope for is a berth at the top of the second division of the Ivy League.")

What's happened? The change is difficult to pin-point, but even the occasional fan could not help but notice a tremendous difference. The quintet isn't blowing big leads, they're not throwing the ball away repeatedly, they're hustling 40 minutes a game.

The answer may be that hackneyed old concept of team spirit. A senior on the team observed that the players like each other and function well together. "For the first time since my freshman year," he said, "I'm enjoying basketball."

How long will it last? Crimson teams in the past have frequently stopped trying after one heartbreaking loss. In 1954, for example, Harvard won nine of its first 14 games, and then dropped a cliffhanger against Navy; the team lost the next ten in a row, by an average margin of '20 points per game.

Really, no one knows if the new era will even last for a season, but no one is hoping more fervently that it will than that rarity, the Harvard Basketball Fan

There are some individuals who pursue only unattainable girls, worship the New York Mets, and root for the Indians to clobber the cowboys; upon such a masochistic foundation was built the personality of the fan who rooted for the basketball team and blithely ignored the myriad of successful Harvard winter sports teams.

The faithful have waited through many lean winters for a waited through many lean winters for a winning Harvard basketball team--and they're going to have one this year