Cagers Headed for One Devil of a Time

Sometimes you just have to say, "What the heck."

And for the Harvard men's basketball team, Monday night might well be one of those times.

Because on Monday night, the men cagers will find themselves in Durham, N.C., facing the Duke Blue Devils before an intimate (sell-out) gathering of 8564 at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Just to review some facts about the foregoing:

* Duke is 16-2 and the second-ranked team in the country. Its only two losses have been to the first-ranked North Carolina and fourth-ranked Georgia Tech.

* Harvard is 3-10 and in last place in the Ivy League.

* Duke, through its first 15 games, had 28 dunks (the very fact that somebody at Duke keeps track of that statistic should tell you a lot). No Crimson cager has recorded a dunk in the past two seasons.

What the heck.

To get a very rough handle on this contest, consider a common opponents chain. In the middle of December, the Crimson fell to Manhattan College, 81-69. Several weeks later, North Carolina embarrassed Manhattan, 129-45, in one of the worst defeats in NCAA history. And last weekend, the Tar Heels squeaked by Duke at home, 95-92.

Now, if you accept that Manhattan is 12 points better than Harvard (which is probably not true), that UNC is 84 points better than Manhattan (which may well be true), and that North Carolina is three points superior to Duke (again, possible), then Duke should beat Harvard by, oh, 93 points.

Oops.

And while it's highly unlikely that the Crimson will actually lose by 93 points, that might be the order of magnitude we're talking here.

"I'm not going to occupy my time with fairy tales," Harvard Coach Pete Roby said. "I'm a realist, and I know this is going to be a very, very, very difficult game for us. I'm not concerned with the outcome as much as how we play.

"As I've said all along, you don't prepare for Brandeis any different than you prepare for Duke," added Roby, whose cagers host the Judges tomorrow before journeying to Durham. "When you start doing that [preparing differently], you become inconsistent."

And no team in the country can afford to be inconsistent against the Blue Devils. "We have to play a perfect game to stay in the game," Crimson forward Neil Phillips said. "We want to see what we can do against a couple of All-Americans."

In that case, the cagers are going to the right place.

Duke is led by possible All-American guard Johnny Dawkins. The 6-ft., 2-in. senior leads the team with 18.8 points per game and is the Blue Devil's second all-time scorer (wedged between a pair of NBA players, Gene Banks and Mike Gminski) and all-time assist leader.

Thirty-three of those career points came at the expense of the Crimson two years ago when the Washington, D.C., native single-handedly held off the cagers in an 89-86 Duke triumph.

Dawkins is essentially a lock to go in the first round of the NBA draft.

At the other guard spot is dependable junior Tommy Amaker, who's averaging 6.6 points and 6.8 assists per game. Amaker has better than a three-to-one assists-to-turnovers ratio.

A pair of high-scoring seniors start at forward for Duke: Mark Alarie and David Henderson.

The 6-ft., 8-in. Alarie is second on the team in scoring (16.6) and leads the team in field goal percentage, shooting at a 59 percent clip from the floor.

Six-ft., 5-in. Henderson is third on the team in scoring (14.3) and second in field goal percentage at 57.5 percent.

Last year's most highly recruited high school player in the country, 6-ft., 9-in. Danny Ferry, rounds out Duke's starting five.

Ferry, the younger brother of Harvard's third all-time leading scorer, Bob Ferry '85, has had a credible freshman year thus far, averaging nearly seven points per game and leading the team in rebounding.

Ironically, it was brother Bob who led the Crimson with 19 points in last year's Harvard-Duke contest, a game the Blue Devils won handily, 82-53.

Alarie led the hosts with 18 points and Dawkins chipped in 16 points, 11 assists, and six rebounds.

Current members of the Crimson netted a total of eight points that night.

The cagers will be led Monday by freshman Phillips, who leads the squad in scoring (12.6 ppg), field goal percentage (50.7), free throw percentage (89.7) and rebounds (5.8 per game).

As of yesterday, Roby had not finalized his starting five. During the recent Penn-Princeton journey, Roby inserted freshman forward Fred Schernecker into the starting line-up, replacing first Kyle Dodson and then Bill Mohler.

Roby declined to say who would be starting next to Phillips in the frontcourt.

Keith Webster (second in scoring with 11.7 ppg) and Captain Pat Smith will likely get the nod at the guard spots for Harvard.

"It would be great [to win the game]," Schernecker said. "If we get a good start and stay in the game, we have a chance. They put their pants on one leg at a time, too."

But perhaps a more realistic thought is voiced by forward Matt DeGreif who said, "Twenty years from now, I can tell my kid I took a shot over Johnny [Dawkins]."