A Player of Many Parts

There's a big secret on the Harvard basketball team.

The Crimson has a player who can drive to the hoop like Dartmouth's Bryan Randall, or shoot from the outside like Princeton's Bob Scrabis, or pass the ball like Yale's Peter White. At any time he wants.

Would you believe that this all-around player is senior Tom Morrison?

Even though the 5-ft., 10-in., 150-lb. guard doesn't have the talent of those players, every week in practice, Morrison and the rest of Harvard's second-team have to become the Crimson's next foes so the first team can practice against them.

"He works real hard to simulate the game situation," Harvard Coach Peter Roby says. "It's a tough role to play, but he's reacted well to it."

"When you're not playing a lot of minutes, you have to get satisfaction out of something," Morrison says.

And though he isn't a captain, the senior's maturity and enthusiasm help to get everyone on the white team (the second team) ready to face the red team (the first team).

"He's a solid white-teamer," says sophomore Sean Duffy. "He's invaluable to the younger guys who aren't getting as much playing time. The white team wouldn't have been the same this year without T-Moe."

"He's taken it upon himself to be the captain of the second team, and get them psyched up to play us in practice," Tri-Captain Bill Mohler says. "He's helped us a lot."

As a freshman coming out of Thomas Wootten High School in Potomac Md., Morrison realized that he wouldn't play over guard Keith Webster, so he decided not to play basketball for the next two years.

So Emotional

"I knew basketball wasn't the only thing," Morrison says. "I wanted to experience the other aspects of college life."

The Eliot House resident played for the Classics basketball club and took a semester off to study economics at University of London. But he still missed being on the varsity team so he tried out this year.

"The fun aspects--the camaraderie and the friendships outweighed the possibility of not playing," Morrison says.

So, Morrison has made the most out of his time on the team this year, in practice, in the locker room, and outside of the arena.

All That Jazz

"He's the kind of guy that's liked by everybody," Tri-Captain Mike Gielen says. "He's a unifying force in that sense. He picks us up when we're down."

Saturday night in his final home game, Roby started Morrison for the first time, and let the senior play the first few minutes of the game. It was the first game of the season that Morrison's father could attend.

"It meant more to me that my father and my buddies could see me, than it was to play just a few minutes," Morrison says.

After he was taken out of the game, Morrison's friends in the stands gave the senior a standing ovation.

And it was remarkably similar to the ovations that the people he imitates get.