Texas Tops Cagers At Boston Garden

The longhorn of big-time basketball reached into Harvard's back yard, and its imposing possessors, the university of Texas, extracted a 85-73 victory last night before 3000 at the Boston Garden.

Texas needed to extend itself perhaps a little more than it expected in order to return south with the triumph, as Harvard's corps of flashy shooters kept the Crimson in the game until the very end.

"By the end, they wore us down," coach Frank McLaughlin said after the game, and that indeed was the story. After an impressive first half, the thick Texas crude--boasting a starting forward line measuring 6-ft. 4-in., 6-ft. 6-in, and 6-ft. 10-in. respectively--out-rebounded, and denied the Crimson the ball for just too long.

Memo From Turner

Longhorn freshman guard George Turner, number double zero, inflicted the most damage. He scored 25 points, and led several successful fast breaks, especially in the second half when the fatigued Harvard team couldn't keep up.

Surprisingly, it wasn't the height differential that did Harvard in. Texas's LaSalle Thompson, the beefy 6-ft. 10-in. center out of Cincinatti who was one of the most zealously recruited athletes in the country last year, was stymied for much of the evening, the victim of inexperience and aggressive boxing out by Harvard's Mark Harris and Bob Allen.

After two games--the first an easy win over Catholic U.--this much can be said about the cagers: when they are hitting, no defense, no matter how big, can stop them. The task they face now is putting together 40 minutes of hot shooting against faster and bigger opponents.

In the first half, Harvard did what it knew it had to do. Shoot. And not miss. The Crimson sank an awesome 63 per cent from the floor, while Texas conected only 42 per cent of the time.

The opening few minutes had Texas looking for magnets and pulleys, and the crowd checking their programs to make sure they had come to the right game. The Crimson hit the first three shots of the game, and when Tom Mannix nailed a 18-footer with the and a half minutes gone, Harvard had a 10-2 lead.

The gap soon closed however, primarily because of strong shooting by the 1978 NIT most valuable player Ron Baxter who finished with 19 points. Despite several opportunities, the Crimson did not fold. Mannix and sophomore guard-forward Don Fleming each hitting for ten points in the stanza.

Apron Strings

The lead changed hands ten times before the Longhorns opened up a 40-34 lead, in no small part to Harvard's--including three each to Mannix and Fleming--to Texas's two.

Harvard responded with freshman Calvin Dixon leading a sweet fast break with a beguiling pass to classmate Lamax Flatt for a ten-foot jumper, Harvard sixth straight point and a tie at 40 with less than a minute remaining in the half.

Foul Play

The half closed with the teams knotted at 42, but the fouls began to loom larger. Playing with three fouls in the second half, Mannix kept up the offensive pressure, finishing the game tied with Fleming at a team-high 18 points.

He took another superb outlet pass from Dixon that brought Harvard to within one, 54-53, but on the next play Fleming picked up foul number four with 12:26 left, and McLaughlin had to shuffle bodies for the remainder of the game.

The Crimson's fatigue manifested itself in some uncharacteristically poor foul shooting, and Texas pulled away at about the three-quarter mark.

THE NOTEBOOK: Greatest cheer of year heard in the Garden last night: to the Texas bench, "You may be winning, but you still have the Shah."

TEXAS 85, HARVARD 73

at the Boston Garden

T--Carson 3 7-8 13; Danks 5 0-0 10; Thompson 2 2-2 6; Turner 11 3-4 25; Baxter 7 5-5 19; Boyd 0 0-0 0; Johnson 3 3-3 9; Olson 1 1-1 3; Totals; 32 21-23 85

H--Allen 2 0-0 4; Fleming 8 2-3 18; Harris 3 3-5 9; Mannix 8 2-2 18; Taylor 4 0-2 8; Dixon 2 2-2 6; Carona 1 0-0 4; totals: 31 11-16 73.

Texas: 42, 43--85.

Harvard: 42, 31--73.

Attendance: 3000.

First game: Boston College 77, Fairfield 53.