Harvard Basketball: What Does It Take To Win?

When Tom Sanders replaced Bob Harrison as Harvard's roundball coach three years ago, it was like replacing night with day. Harrison was a believer in the "win-at-all-costs" philosophy, one which won him too few victories for the talent with which he had to work and a resignation slip after the 1972-'73 campaign.

Sanders' entrance produced a drastic alteration of attitudes, yet one thing remains the same. While the constant pressure Harrison exerted on his players in hopes of creating victories no longer fills the sweaty air of the IAB, there is now no pressure whatsoever on the players. As junior guard Jonas Honick stated, "Sanders lets us get away with murder. He gave, and we took."

What the players didn't take, however, was the number of victories which a team of Harvard's caliber should have produced, and herein lies the cager connection, the one link between the Harrison and Sanders regimes.

Now It would be one thing if the basketball program was indeed at a loss for talent, a popular notion which most people around here are willing to accept, but this simply isn't the case. The Crimson may not be Top Twenty material, but it certainly isn't Ivy basement material, either, and being in the cellar of the Ivy League in basketball is one of the greater embarrassments which any team could suffer.

The Crimson cagers are in the basement, however, and they are embarrassed. "It upsets me," said senior center Mufi Hannemann, "that people say we're not good, because we had the talent. There are certainly some things that we (the players) could've done, but the coaches have to take the blame as well."

And what the coaches have to take the blame for is a) a glaring inability to motivate the players, b) an entire lack of communication between themselves and the team, c) a lack of leadership, and d) a failure to realize that this is collegiate, and not professional, basketball.

Sanders simply hasn't acquired, as of yet, the mentality which is necessary to coach successfully at a collegiate level. The players cannot simply be told what is correct, an aspect of his job at which Satch excels, but they must also be motivated to do it.

There has to be organization, and not the type which develops when you wait until November to elect a captain, when off-season practice is a farce, when regular season practice is almost as great a farce, and when there are never five players who perform together for more than ten minutes at a time.

"One of the reasons that this team lacked leadership," Honick stated, "is that Satch prevents leadership from emerging. No one is secure enough of his position to tell anyone else what to do if you aren't going to play with them for another two to three weeks."

Commiseration

Unlike past years, however, at least this winter the players were unified. "In past years," according to captain Bill Carey, "fragments of the team were unsatisfied. This year, we had a pretty even distribution of talent, so everyone was dissatisfied with his playing time, but we weren't disunited. We were unified in our unhappiness with the program."

Sanders hardly helped to resolve this matter by making a guessing game out of who would start each game. Carey's situation is a case in point. After opening the season on a scoring and rebounding tear, the senior forward suddenly found himself receiving less and less playing time. As his on-court time decreased, so, naturally, did his statistics, which in turn led to an even greater decrease in playing time.

Now Carey was only the best player on last year's team for the second half of the season, and he was this year's captain, so why did he deserve so much bench duty?

Or how about Hannemann, who lingered on the bench for two and two-thirds years, despite the fact that during practices he would consistently outplay many of those who started before him. Finally, Hannemann was given a chance during the latter stages of this season, and he responded with some of the best basketball displayed by any Crimson performer during this, the longest of many long winters of discontent, on the fourth floor of the IAB.

Why, Why, Why?

Why, then, was Hannemann only seen during pre-game shooting drills throughout most of the early-season schedule? It is just one question among many which could be asked in the aftermath of an aborted season, one which would have been better off left unplayed, particularly when you consider what might have been.

For while Princeton was undoubtedly the class of the Ivies, Harvard clearly had the talent to match the other six teams. "There's no reason we shouldn't have competed for the Ivy title," was Hannemann's appraisal, while Carey added that "we should've been above .500 this year. After the Beanpot I thought we'd win every game."

Which, of course, they should have, but then again, let's remember with whom we're dealing. Or perhaps that is the major question. With whom, exactly, and with what are we dealing? The players don't seem to know for sure.

Both Carey and Honick mentioned how they've thought about what went wrong with the team for a long while, yet can't really come up with a satisfying, concrete answer. "There's a certain mystique about Satch," Honick commented, "which The Season Clemson  64-78  L  18-10 Syracuse  70-83  L  20-8 U.Mass.  87-99  L  21-4 B.C.  71-72  L  9-17 Fordham  68-70  L  7-19 Brandeis  87-78  W  10-14 Dartmouth  75-86  L  17-9 Utah  78-89  L  17-8 Rochester  86-75  W  8-15 Penn St.  55-63  L  10-16 Brown  73-66  W  7-20 Princeton  57-62  L  22-4 Penn  53-63  L  17-9 B.C.  79-65  W  9-17 B.U.  86-70  W  7-19 Brown  56-58  L  7-20 Yale  73-63  W  7-20 Columbia  67-75  L  8-17 Cornell  69-85  L  8-18 Penn  75-80  L  17-9 Princeton  48-69  L  22-4 Cornell  66-63  W  8-18 Columbia  92-83  W  8-17 Dartmouth  64-66  L  17-9 Yale  62-63  L  7-20 Brown  86-101  L  7-20

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