Falling and Rising Stars

There wasn't much for Harvard partisans to complain about during Wednesday night's 10-3 destruction of Boston University at Bright Center, except perhaps the lack of company.

A thousand empty seats were on hand for the worst Crimson pummeling of the Terriers in 19 years.

Unfortunately, college tends to put a four-year limit on the average sports fan's memory, so maybe people have forgotten the days when B.U. Harvard hockey games were life-and-death matters. To understand the hatred Crimson fans developed for their Common-wealth Avenue rivals, you have to realize it was usually life for B.U. and death for Harvard.

From the 1963-64 season to the 1978-79 campaign, Harvard's record versus B.U. was a miserable 8-29-2. And the Terriers invariably met and defeated the Crimson in ECAC playoff games, eliminating Harvard in the '67 and '68 quarterfinals, in the '72 semis, in the '74 and '75 finals and in the '76 semis.

Harvard had some pretty strong teams in those years, including the '74-75 squad that went 12-0 in the Ivies, but B.U. skated away with the titles in the end, including national championships in '71, '72 and '78. With four future members of the 1980 gold-medal Olympic team, the Terriers swept the ECAC flags from 1974-77.

With a record like that, Terrier Coach Jack Parker, in his tenth season as B.U.'s mentor, had some trouble comprehending what happened to his team Wednesday night. He gave his players a chewing out in the locker room after the game; responding to reporter's questions later, he was still to get his thoughts together, Instead he kept repeating himself: "We made mistake and Harvard played well...We made more mistakes, and Harvard played very well...We made a hell of a lot of mistakes." He found other words in describe his team's play (Harvard scored four power play goals): "Pretty pathetic."

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Harvard's Scott Fusco is going through a phase which may have fans assuming that he'll score consistently at his present outlandish rate. Against B.U. his his trick was virtually obscured by the sea of Crimson goals. In any case, multiple-goal games are nothing new for last year's Ivy Rockie of the Year.

Someone still notices though, namely the organizers of the United States Junior National team. Fusco was named to the 20-man roster scheduled to play seven games from Dec. 26 to Jan 4 at the World Junior Championships in Leningrad.

Fusco, however, has decided not to go, preferring to play with Harvard in two winter-vacation games in Minnesota and a back-in-reading-period matchup with Boston College. "I'd feel bad about it [leaving the team], since we have a change to do so well this season," he explained after Wednesday's game.

If you followed NHL, news over the summer, you may have noticed a pro team interested in Fusco, too--the Colorado Rockies (now New Jersey Devils), picked him in the amateur draft and later traded his contract rights to the Hartford Whalers.

Originally it was the Washington Capitals' chief college scout, Dave McNab (brother Peter plays for the Bruins), who had his eye on Fusco. But McNab left the Washington organization and the Caps passed up the high-scoring center. McNab later joined the Hartford scouting crew and, not coincidentally, the Whalers subsequently acquired the rights to Harvard's sophomore center.

Between the U.S. Junior Team, the Whalers and the defensemen who try to separate his head from his body each time out, it seems that, right now, everybody wants a piece of Scott Fusco.