The Sports Dope

Tomorrow night Gene Dressler will play his last varsity basketball game for Harvard. Also appearing for the last time in a Crimson uniform will be.... no one. Dressler, the captain, is the only senior, was the only junior last year, and the only sophomore the year before that. Next year the story won't be much different as only two -- check that, three -- ball players will be around who have gone the whole route. Of Coach Floyd Wilson's 14-man squad, ten are sophomores. This crop is undoubtedly good -- after all, it's beaten Brown twice and Columbia once -- and it may have pushed aside any upperclassmen who had been in the way, but it is still interesting to note that no one was there in the way.

Who are the missing people. Dressler's freshmen companions who disappeared so quickly? For starters, there were Don Arbuckle, Gordon Donaldson, Steve Ekdahl, and Jarobin Gilbert. Donaldson is now the vice-president of PBH; Gilbert is in the Army; Arbuckle played House basketball for Leverett sophomore year, but has sacrificed even that in favor of track. Aside from Dressler and Gilbert, who quit after a week, Ekdahl is the only one who tried out for the varsity, and he gave up before Christmas after a memorable game in which Wilson used him for fifteen-second stretches as a defensive specialist. There are others around: Alan Talesnik, Tom Perkins, and Andy Lewis have played for Winthrop; Barry Goldstein was on Kirkland's "B" team; Larry Gonick made Phi Beta Kappa; Larry O'Brien plays with Ekdahl on Leverett's squad. Gary Vechnak, who scored 20 points in the freshman squad's last game before Christmas vacation and returned to find himself dropped from a starting role to third string, still plays in the summers, but no more in Cambridge.

Their freshman year did nothing to foster interest in the sport -- in other words, it was a season that typifies-Harvard basketball Tryouts were started late in November; the 50 candidates were weeded out exasperatingly slowly; and there was less than a week between the squad's selection and the first game. The team was coached by Bruce Munro, who is the varsity soccer and lacrosse coach and not a hopps mentor. Perhaps most deadly of all, however, was Munro's goal of preparing his boys for next year.

With no one but Arbuckle over 6' 2", the freshmen were confined to Wilson's California offense, a setup that assumes big men up front to be effective and which has been employed unsuccessfully by Wilson year after year. The freshmen were also taught a shuffle offense, which they were asked to use after only one practice. They weren't allowed to play a running game until they were 30 points behind. Dartmouth in the season finale, and one member who never missed a practice gained 20 pounds over the season.

The whole experience was mildly disillusioning to the former high-school stars -- one of the players was an All-Chicago choice from a high school that had two courts better than the IAB's; the top prospect, an All-New York City player named Paul Clegg, quit even before the first game. They followed the Harvard syndrome of deteriorating while playing amid a persistently negative atmosphere and on a team that their high schools could have beaten.

The sad, or maybe funny, story repeated itself the next year, although George Harrington '59 became coach. Bobby Beller, captain and high scorer for the 64-65 freshmen, is now a key reserve. Jeff Grate, who was only fifth high scorer, is now a starter, though his athletic scholarship would probably keep him from quitting anyway. Jim Griswold, the last man on the Yardling team, still perseveres.

But on the other hand, there is Dan Orlovsky, who was All-Chicago and trailed only Beller with a 10.6 freshman average, even though he was a second and sometimes third-stringer. Orlovsky and fellow guard Mike Aron quit the team this year after wasting a season on Wilson's bench. Carl Kendrick, third high scorer, forsook basketball after freshman year, and Steve Handler transfered to Michigan, where he is on the squad.

And there is Jim Federico, a highly-sough-after Rhode Island prospect. who chose Harvard over Brown because Crimson teams were so perenially bad he was sure of playing on them. Federico hasn't been in the IAB since freshman year.