Savoir-Faire

Well, it looks like the Harvard basketball team has finally found itself. With a sweep of Cornell and Columbia at the IAB last weekend, the cagers not only equal ed their longest winning streak of the season, but they also upped their record to a 8-15 (not bad, huh), a mark which includes a glittering 3-8 showing in the powerhouse Ivy League, and moved an entire half game ahead of Yale and into seventh place in the Ivy standings.

With games against Dartmouth tonight and Yale and Brown this weekend, the cagers might even duplicate their tremendous feat of a year ago, when they concluded play with five straight triumphs and the promise of better things in the future, the future presumably being this winter.

But don't count on it, because the only consistent thing about the Harvard basketball team is its ability to lose games it should win and its knack of playing such a boring brand of basketball that nine o'clock classes seem exciting by comparison.

Oh, yes, there is also one other area where the team is remarkably consistent, for it is consistently plagued with problems, and not the sort which opposing forwards cause, either. The problems are of the internal variety, the type which arise when Doc Hines quits and then rejoins the team within a week's time in November, when Joe Leondis misses practice and the subsequent tournaments over Christmas break, and when, just last week, leading scorer and rebounder Brian Banks is suspended from the team for the remainder of the season.

All of these problems have a common origin--an absence of communication between the team and the coaching staff--which is somewhat surprising in light of Tom Sanders's background. But if the Celtics' defensive signals had been well attuned as Sanders is with his Crimson players, then the championship flags now hanging in Boston Garden would probably be in Los Angeles or Philadelphia instead.

Sure, Satch may be a great teacher, but that doesn't help to cure the disorganization and sloppy play which his team more often than not adopts as its game plan. In particular, it doesn't cure or reverse losses to teams like Brown, Cornell and Columbia, teams which on a good day would have trouble with Box Jox.

The most recent development--Banks's suspension--occurred suddenly and was brushed over just as suddenly. One weekend, he was leading Harvard against Penn and Princeton with 22 points, 13 rebounds and 15 points, eight rebounds, respectively. The next weekend he was suspended for the season, presumably for missing practice three days last week.

When questioned as to what caused Banks's suspension, Sanders replied that he preferred to keep it a team matter. Admitting that Banks was one of the best players in the basketball program, Sanders said that Banks, a junior, "probably won't be with us for the rest of this season," and as for next year, "it's up to him."

It doesn't really matter, though, what caused this particular suspension, but rather, what has caused similar incidents to be nearly as numerous in Sanders's Harvard career as the number of victories which his teams have managed.

The basketball program has enough going against it already without having to withstand the burden of a coach who is incommunicado with his players. Any team which has to call the IAB its home and play a schedule which calls for back-to-back contests in Cambridge over both vacation and intersession weekends is at a big enough disadvantage as it is. Then you throw in the history of Harvard basketball (its first Ivy title is still forthcoming) and the (lack of) fan support which the team receives, and you realize that if the athletic program has an achilles heel, it exists on the fourth floor of the IAB.

Perhaps this heel will be cured by next year, but the cry of next year has become the trademark of the Harvard basketball program, one which could use a new place to play, a new schedule and a new outlook. And for openers, how about a little chit-chat between the coach and the players. Now that would really be new.