The Curse of the Big Green First Halves

To lead off the first men's basketball notebook in several weeks, we have the startling fact that in last Saturday's contest against Columbia, six Crimson cagers scored exactly four points.

Beside those six, two Cantabs hit for 10 points (Neil Phillips and Fred Schernecker), freshman Kevin Collins, a former JV player recently moved up to the varsity, was scoreless in his first varsity action, and David Lang netted five points.

The previous high this season for number of Crimson players scoring exactly four points in one game (I have no idea why I bothered to figure this out) was three in the Lehigh game last month.

Harvard (5-15 overall, 1-7 Ivy after being swept last weekend by Columbia and Cornell) shot 26.5 percent from the floor in the second half against the Lions in the process of allowing the visitors to blow open a 45-43 ballgame and cruise home to a 60-49 victory.

The 26.5 percent mark was the lowest single-half accuracy rate of the season for the cagers, barely eclipsing the 26.7 clip which the Crimson hit at in the first half of the New Hampshire game (which the Wildcats won in overtime, 65-62).

The two next worst shooting performances for a half by Harvard this year both came in the first half of games against Dartmouth: 28.1 percent in the first half of the first game at Hanover, N.H., and 29.0 percent in the second game a week ago in Cambridge.

Overall, Harvard made just 18 of 63 field goal attempts in Big Green first halves this season. Not that it means anything, but for the one Darmouth game last year I could find statistics on, the Crimson shot 56.5 percent in the first half.

In total, the cagers have had five half-shooting performances in the 20s, 10 in the 30s, 18 in the 40s, six in the 50s, and one in the 70s (against Brandeis in an 81-58 rout). Harvard is shooting 42 percent from the field this year, well below the 52.3 percent last year's Crimson averaged.

And speaking of last year....

There are obviously quite a few fundamental differences between last year's veteran team, which contained a number of proven all-Ivy performers and an experienced coach, and this year's largely freshman squad led by first-year coach Pete Roby.

Given that no one expected this year's unit to be anything like last year's 15-9 team, comparisons between the two squads aren't particularly relevant.

But several are quite interesting. Under Frank McLaughlin's iron-man regime last year, every starter averaged at least 34.9 minutes per game, and the most used sub--Kyle Dodson--averaged less than nine minutes of action per contest.

This year, however, freshman Phillips leads the team with 32 minutes per contest, and guard Mike Gielen, who recently broke into the starting line-up, was averaging over 21 minutes per game coming off the bench.

With six games remaining this year, the Crimson already has amassed 41 blocks and 152 steals. All of last year, Harvard registered 27 rejections and 116 take-aways.

Leading the cagers this year are Bill Mohler with 28 blocks and Keith Webster with 51 steals.

Another low-light of that Columbia game was the 6:09 stretch of the second half during which the Crimson failed to score a single point. That wasn't the longest dry spell of the year for Harvard, however.

Back in the first half of the game at Penn last month, the Crimson was held scoreless for six minutes and 26 seconds, during which time the Quakers increased their already substantial lead to 32-10.

Two other times this year, Harvard has gone scoreless for more than five minutes: 5:20 in the second half of the New Hampshire game and 5:16 during the first half of the Princeton game.

From our New York bureau chief comes word that Harvard's all-time leading scorer, Joe Carrabino '85, is no longer playing in the Belgian League. Instead, Carrabino is playing with a touring American team made up of former college and pro stars.

This week's trivia question comes from Harvard Sports Information Director Ed Markey, who asks, "What do the members of the Harvard basketball team and our soldiers in Viet Nam have in common?" Answer below.

Word from the Midwest has it that Harvard's all-time, all-division free throw record of 82.2 percent set two years ago is in serious danger. It seems that the Michigan State Spartans are sinking free throws at an 81.8 percent clip, dangerously close to probably the only national collegiate mark ever held by a Harvard basketball team.

But the situation is looking better for the Crimson--if I remember correctly, the Spartans were hitting at better than an 83 percent clip earlier in the season.

Here's one lifetime Michigan Wolverine fan hoping that 'State doesn't achieve fame of any sort on the basketball court this season.

Meanwhile, Harvard is connecting at a 75.8 percent clip from the charity stripe this year and was eighth in the nation in team percentage in the latest NCAA statistical report.

Leading the cagers are six players shooting over 80 percent, including guards Pat Smith at .875 and Webster at .857.

Two frontcourt men, Phillips and Mohler, are leading the squad with 10 perfect free throw shooting nights (defined as games in which the player takes at least one free throw and doesn't miss any). Mohler (twice) and Dodson share the honor for the most prolific perfect night of the season with 6-for-6 performances.

From the Neil Phillips File, the freshman forward from Germantown, Md., continues to lead the Crimson in a host of catagories including scoring (11.9 points per game) and rebounding (5.8 per game).

Phillips has also led the team in scoring 10 times, tops on the squad, and twice as many times as the next best cager (Webster, with five scoring leaderships). The freshman forward also has the most number of rebound leaderships (nine), and is the only cager not to play regularly at guard to lead the squad in assists (which he has done four times, most recently in the Columbia game).

Then there's the recent field goal shooting ups and downs of freshman guard Gielen. The Bowie, Md. native shot 4-for-6 against Brandeis right after exam period and 3-for-4 at Duke, only to fall to 1-for-7 in the following game against Yale.

Gielen got back on track against Brown (5-for-6) and Dartmouth (5-for-7), but then slipped to even against Cornell (3-for-6) and even worse against the Lions Saturday (2-for-8).

In games that the freshman is hot, he's the team's best outside shooter and a very important asset to a squad which has struggled offensively this season. But Gielen has yet to maintain the hot hand for more than a couple of games so far.

Quiz answer: The average age is/was 19. Harvard Men's Basketball 5-15 Overall, 1-7 Ivy

Name  Gm  Gs  Min  fg  fgapct  ft  fta  pct  reb  as  to   bk  st  pf  pts  ave Neil Phillips  20  20  638  98  213   .460  41  49  .837  115  36  42< Tab>3  27  36  237  11.9 K. Webster  20  15  557  89  206  . 432  48  56  .857  78  37  540  51  58  226  11.3 Kyle Dodson  20  19  508  51  148  .3 45  35  59  .593  45  7  41   1  7  60  137  6.9 Mike Gielen  20  3  439  54  108  .50 0  15  18  .833  49  51  50   1  32  41  123  6.2 Bill Mohler  20  19  377  34  92  .37 0  50  62  .806  100  4  34   28  4  69  118  5.9 FSchernecker  20  4  324  48  107.449  2  30  .733  57  9  23< Tab>3  12  50  118  5.9 Tedd Evers  20  3  298  36  89  .404< Tab>18  28  .643  29  16  39  1< Tab>5  37  90  4.5 Pat Smith  20  17  442  30  78  .385   14  16  .875  45  58  58  0   17  40  74  3.7 David Lang  20  0  237  18  40  .45026  31  .839  51  5  10  32  24  62  3.1 Matt DeGreeff  6  0  37  7  9  .7782  5  .400  11  0  4  0  0   6  16  2.7 Bill Whelan  3  0  12  1  6  .1676  6  1.00  2  0  1  0  01  8  2.7 Todd Litfin  3  0  9  0  2  .000   5  8  .625  3  0  2  0  00  5  1.7 R. Simmons  4  0  12  1  2  .5003  4  .750  4  0  5  1  24  5  1.3 Dave Wolkoff  13  0  100  5  20  .250   6  12  .500  21  5  8  12  10  16  1.2 Carm Scarpa  6  0  31  0  3  .0000  0  ...  2  5  3  0  21  0  0  .0