Sparking a New Season?

Dartmouth threw a radio into the basketball team's bathtub; the shock could turn a season around.

Harvard's triple-overtime victory in Hanover. N.H., came after the team's season had reached its nadir. Coach Frank McLaughlin's crew had self-lestructed in the Colonial Classic, collapsing in the consolation round to UMass, a team that had lost 29 games in a row.

The problem was--and has been, all season long--shooting. A small team with no man over 6-ft. 5-in., the cagers cannot go inside against anyone, so they must hit from outside. When they don't, they lose.

With shooting hovering around an abysmal 35 per cent, the Crimson lost seven of eight after upsetting Holy Cross. Tuesday night was different.

"We played our best game of the season by far," McLaughlin said yesterday. Sixty-two per cent from the floor tells the whole story. To explain the turnaround. McLaughlin assumes the role of mother, Father, psychiatrist and cheerleader.

"They are a very sensitive bunch of guys, and we were all very sympathetic with each other," he said. "Other teams might have cashed it in, but we said, 'screw it,' let's just play. Sometimes you start thinking too much."

But the big guns come into town this weekend. Harvard is now 2-3 Ivy. tied for fifth place, yet the only teams it has topped are Dartmouth (1-4, seventh place) and Cornell (0-6, eighth place). Second place Princeton comes to the IAB tonight at 7:30, and league-leader and defending champion Penn visits Saturday.

The Tiger squad that coach Pete Carril brings to Cambridge tonight will bear little resemblance to the prototypical Carril units. Gone is the back-breaking, full-court, man-to-man defense in favor of a zone. McLaughlin thinks wistfully of what 62 per cent shooting could do to a zone.

Plenty. "Remember what the football team did against Yale," McLaughlin said, adding. "Well, this is our Yale weekend." But the real world intrudes. Harvard has defeated Penn exactly twice since 1967, and Carril, in 13 years in New Jersey, is 23-1 over the Crimson. Not an encouraging tradition.

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Viewing instructions for tonight's game: Walk up the IAB stairs. Catch your breath. Into the door about 15 paces and take a seat opposite Mr. Carril, basketball coach of Princeton University and one of America's leading candidates for an apoplexy.

Carril coaches in constant despair; he whines, grunts, implores and terrorizes his players into performing--usually quite well.

The Carril method--if having all the blood vessels in your head stand out is a method--has taken Princeton to the NCAAs three times and to a .688 overall winning percentage. Besides hysteria, program-eating and white-shirt-wearing, the Carril style usually means incredibly tight defense, patient offense (read: mostly short players) and winning. Carril is not pretty.