Saturday Night Is All Right at the IAB

The word on Harvard basketball was that the Crimson could run with anybody--for about 25 minutes of a 40 minute contest. When Harvard went into the locker room at halftime trailing Ivy League powerhouse Penn by only two points Saturday night, the IAB faithful went wild, but even the most devoted fans did not expect the upset that would make them forget last week's boxing match.

Precedent

Harvard seemed to have set itself an unbreakable precedent by blowing Fordham, UConn and the highranking University of Detroit off the floor in the first half of their match-ups only to choke in the second stanza.

Even the "we almost won" game against Princeton the night before reinforced Coach Frank McLaughlin's words about the dismal beginning of the season: "We knew we were going to lose but it was going to be exciting."

But Saturday night, the Harvard cagers were hot. They burned up the nets with their feverish shooting and even John Travolta could not out-hustle the likes of Glenn Fine, Bob Hooft, and Cyrus Booker.

And the crowd was into it. They did not stop screaming and yelling even when Fine put the game away with six foul shots in the last minute. The fans did enough footstomping and jumping around that the B&G snow removal team picked up even more overtime pulling plaster out of the IAB pool.

High Heads

As McLaughlin said yesterday, "Saturday night's game gave our program credibility. The fans were sitting back for awhile but now there's a lot of people around this university holding their heads high."

Harvard certainly had no shortage of heroes Saturday night. Hooft's streak of scintillating shooting in the second half brought back memories of another left-hander of the West named Lynn Shackleford, who used to shoot the lights out for UCLA.

Mr. Smooth

Center Brian Banks finished his tests on the breakability of plexiglass and smoothed out his line-drive free throws enough to can a bucketful of clutch foul shots.

But the biggest hero of the game was the Harvard basketball program itself. McLaughlin and his charges put a lot of work into this one. "The team watched the film of the Princeton game before the game Saturday night and they just came out and did a tremendous job," McLaughlin said.

Next Year

The victory can pump new life into the Crimson team by attracting the quality high school recruits which Harvard badly needs. Harvard may be living it up now, but the tubes are going to be pulled at the end of the season.

Banks, Booker, Roosevelt Cox, and co-captain Gary Ackerman are hanging up their Converse this year. This means that McLaughlin will not be looking up to any returning lettermen taller than 6 ft. 6 in. So a big recruiting year is needed, and a game like the one against Penn can bring just this kind of new blood.

But right now Harvard basketball has something to celebrate, and next year is on nobody's mind. All anyone wants is the memories of Fine dribbling while the crowd danced, and the band playing as the Quakers were counted out on the greatest day of Harvard's recent basketball history.