From Tragedy to Triumph

By season's end only the black patches were reminders that it had all begun with a tragedy. The success of the Harvard men's basketball team made it easy for everyone but the team members to forget.

And though they never vowed to "win it" for John Harnice their teammate who had drowned several months before the members of the Crimson squad never forgot.

"We just didn't want the sadness to linger over Co Captain Ken Plutnicki now. Instead we wanted to remember John in a happy vein.

"The idea of the black patches [on the uniforms] and his memory really helped to bring the team together" junior guard Bob Ferry says.

And the Crimson used that units to turn the season that started so painfully into one of its most successful ever.

At the center was the 6 ft. 8 in Joe Carrabino, returning from a painful back injury that sidelined him for all but two games last year.

"Without Joe," Crimson Coach Frank McLaughlin said earlier this year, "we're not too different than we were last year."

With him, though the Crimson became the darlings of the Ivy League. The minor surprise that the cagers were still in the running for their first ever Ivy laurels as late as February turned into a minor miracle when they were still there in March.

The team that over the years has been Harvard's all-time losingest squad turned it all around this year with a 15-11 record overall and 9-5 mark.

And there's a feeling around Briggs Athletic Center that this is just a start.

"We certainly started something this year," McLaughlin agrees. "I think we've raised the expectations of Harvard basketball."

They just didn't know what to expect from Harvard basketball at season's start. "We had a lot of questions at the start," Carrabino says. "Like how I would play, how the freshmen would play and who would replace Calvin Dixon?"

It took hall the year for the squad to answer, but those answers would prove to be the keys to only the Crimson's second winning season in 11 years.

Carrabino would play like the Ivy Player of the Year he became, freshmen" would become, "the freshman" and he would play just fine, thank you and Pat Smith would gladly and, at times, superbly replace Calvin Dixon.

We didn't come together as a team until the second half of the year, says Arne Duncan, who when he stepped in almost halfway through the year became the final link on Harvard's runner-up team. "A lot of players were new to each other."

But when the newcomers--Carrabino Smith and Duncan--grooved with the oldtimers-standout guard Ferry and senior forward Plutnicki everything turned groovy.

Add freshman Keith Webster to the lineup and throw Duke onto, the schedule and that's where it took off. After a last-minute 89-86 loss to the highly touted Blue Devils--a defeat that saw the Crimson play its finest ball of the year--the cagers took off on an 8-2 tear.

And if not for a pair of losses to Cornell and a pair of last-minute controversial defeats at the hands of Penn, that elusive Ivy title would have belonged to the Crimson.

Instead, the Cantabs had to settle for their first road victories in more than a year, two victories over league champion Princeton--one at the Tigers' Jadwin Gym that broke a quarter century losing streak there--and a brand new NCAA team free-throw percentage record.

"We have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of," says McLaughlin, explaining his club's failure to win when the title was on the line.

"We have a major goal to accomplish," Duncan says. "We should be able to start next year exactly where we left off this year," he adds, cognizant that all but Plutnicki and Co-Captain Monroe Trout will return.

"I wish I could stick it out," the graduating Plutnicki says, "because I'd be an Ivy League champion."