Harvard Cagers Face UConn; Sanders to Make Home Debut

"It's been a long road from the playgrounds of Harlem, to the Celtics, and then to Harvard. And it's been quite a road at that." --Tom Sanders, May 15, 1973

Tonight will be a night of firsts in the Indoor Athletic Building. Tom "Satch" Sanders will reach the end of that "long road" when he coaches the Harvard basketball team at home for the first time in an 8 p.m. game against UConn.

The Harvard squad will be coming off its first win, a heart-stopping 65-64 victory over Dartmouth on Tuesday night and hoping to make its home opener a win. UConn, although it lost to Holy Cross, 91-85, rolled past Yale, 102-88, and like Harvard stands 1-1 on the season.

"Being at home, everybody will be more comfortable," Sanders said yesterday. The Crimson five need to relax; against Dartmouth they collapsed under pressure and lost 10- and 12-point leads.

Late Victory

Only captain Tony Jenkin's technical foul shot after the buzzer salvaged a victory. With less than one second left and the score tied at 64-64, a confused Dartmouth player called an illegal sixth timeout. Jenkins sank the resulting technical foul shot to give Sanders his first coaching win.

Sanders said that Harvard must develop a "killer instinct," feeding the big men--Jenkins and Lou Silver--when they are scoring easily. Silver scored 24 points and pulled down 11 rebounds on Tuesday and, as Sanders said, "he rose to the occasion."

Jenkins, potentially the best forward in the East, is such a talented athlete that, even though he performed poorly on defense (his man, Adam Sutton, scored 25 points), he still managed to score 18 himself and grab a game-leading 15 rebounds. At 6 ft. 8 in. Jenkins moves as gracefully as a guard and is accurate shooting inside or outside.

Dee Rowe's Connecticut team gets most of its scoring from two guards. Senior captain Jimmy Foster, injured for half of last season, is averaging 19 points per game, and diminutive sophomore A1 Weston has scored 22 and 19 points in the Huskies' two games. Harvard's Mike Griffen and Ken Wolfe will probably have the task of stopping the UConn guards.

Gary Custick, at 6 ft. 8 in., Earl Wilson and Cal Chapman will battle Harvard under the boards. All three hit for double figures in the Yale game opener.