An End to a Frustrating Campaign

NEW HAVEN, Conn.--This past season was probably one of the most annoying campaigns in recent memory for the Harvard men's basketball team.

The Crimson has definitely improved from last year, but it only finished with a 9-17 record.

Everyone knows that the Crimson kind of sucked during the 1992-93 season. That team finished with a record of 6-20, and some games were such blowouts that they looked like reruns of Dream Team vs. Outer Mongolia.

This past year was a totally different story, Kyle Snowden will probably win the Ivy League Rookie of the Year award. Darren Rankin and Mike Gilmore also blossomed into good players.

However, the Crimson still won only nine games and finished in sixth place in the Ivy-League, ahead of only Columbia and Cornell, which does not show the true talent on the team.

The problem was that Harvard repeatedly lost the close games this season. Five of their nine Ivy League losses were decided by margins of less than six points.

Compare that to season, when you could only say the same about two of their 11 conference losses. The Crimson also gave up over 100 points to Cornell and to Columbia last year.

"We were not in these [close] situations last year," Harvard Coach Frank Sullivan said after Saturday's loss at Yale. "It's frustrating on one level--that we aren't winning--but not on another. It's challenge for out team to be in these close games."

But that doesn't take away the sing of losing. Even after Harvard played Yale evenly for most of Saturday's contest, the Elis got the last laugh.

It brings up the age-old question: would you rather lose by 2 points or 20? Would you rather get blown out by a superior team, or spend a two-hour bus ride home second-guessing yourself?

Is being the Buffalo Bills worse than finishing dead last in the NFL?

"You hate to lose a close game," Snowden said. "To be honest I hate these one-point games. You start thinking to yourself, 'What if I did this, what if I did this?"

You kind of have to feel sorry for the Crimson. The team is trying to show that it belongs in the upper echelon of the Ivy League, but something always goes awry.

In Saturday's game, the defense was not quite good enough to stop the Elis. Against Princeton on February 18, the offense had its shooting troubles.

And during the one-point loss to Penn, Harvard's game was running well on all cylinders, but not well enough.

It is almost as if a curse has been placed upon Harvard that forces it to loss in the most gut-wrenching ways.

"We could have easily won five or six more games," Gilmore said. "But I'm proud of the fact that we came out strong."

Maybe next season will be different. Maybe the Crimson will win six or seven Ivy League games by less than five points apiece.

Maybe I'll be writing columns about how incredibly lucky this team is.

It would only be fair to let Harvard smoke that victory cigar once in a while.

Eric. F. Brown is a Crimson staff writer. He is an active member of the Buffalo Bills fan club.