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Cagers Look to 'Get Somewhere'
Inner Toobin
If you know Harvard basketball, you know Mr. Zimmerman. And Mr. Zimmerman knows Harvard basketball.
Mr. Zimmerman is Henry Zimmerman '25 of Brookline, Harvard basketball's only season-ticket holder, and a fixture for many years in the dingy confines of the IAB. At halftime of a game this season, Mr. Zimmerman discussed the cagers, delivering a succinct judgment of their progress: "Yeah, they're getting better, but soon they're gonna have to get somewhere." And then Mr. Zimmerman shrugged.
The bottom line for 1979-80 Harvard basketball reads as follows: 11 wins, 15 losses overall, and fifth place in the Ivy League with a 6-8 record. The Crimson defeated Holy Cross, one of the East's strongest squads, but lost to UMass, probably its worst. Harvard played in two tournaments, and finished last in both. On the final day of the season, Harvard played its best game and nipped Yale, 86-85.
The Ivy League record is exactly the same as it was last season but one place worse; the overall mark represents a four-and-a-half game improvement. In short, well,...shrug.
Despite the mediocre numbers, the year rates as at least a partial success. Harvard's top seven players included one senior, two juniors, two sophomores and two freshmen. The traditional plaint of the losing coach--"it was a rebuilding year"--actually works this time.
The primary product of that rebuilding effort is Donald Fleming, the 6-ft. 4-in. sophomore forward from New Haven, Ct., who finished the year with six straight outstanding performances, second place in the Ivy scoring derby (19.6 points per game) and an all but guaranteed All-Ivy selection.
But for the Crimson to pose a serious threat next year, Fleming must avoid a repeat of the ten-game slumpt he endured this January and February, during which the cagers dropped eight of ten. The two juniors, Mark Harris and Tom Mannix, provided the backbone of the team. The 6-ft. 5-in. Harris did the dirty work, always guarding the opponent's center and anchoring a shaky defense. Mannix's 25-footers have become an IAB staple and his 3.3 assists per game was third best in the Ivies.
Question Marks
The big question marks were, and remain, the freshmen. Calvin Dixon arrived with havy advance billing, but made no one forget Oscar Robertson. No one questions his potential--one evening of watching those moves dispels any doubts--yet the end result only adequate. He shot poorly (36 per cent), and only infrequently put all that flash to work.
Nor did the other newcomer, Lamar Flatt, burn up the league; the 6-ft. 9-in South Carolinian never overcame his lack of speed. "I don't think there's any doubt Lamar can be a top player," McLaughlin says, but "he has to run and work on the Nautilus [weight-lifting machine] to realize his potential."
Since only senior captain Bob Allen is leaving, players averaging a total of 64 points per game will be returning, "plus," says McLaughlin, "a year of experience and hopefully a good recruiting year. And of the teams that finished ahead of us, well, Penn and Princeton are always good, Yale had seven seniors and Brown had Peter Moss [a senior], the best player in the league."
So McLaughlin sees a bright future, hinting at several gold nuggest recruits, hoping (still) for a new place to play, and anxious to elicit more than a shrug from the cagers' biggest fan.
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