Men's Squash Blanks Trinity, 9-0

Betwen 1964 to 1975, the UCLA men's basketball team won 10 of a possible 12 NCAA Division I titles. For these 10 very good reasons, John Wooden's program has been deemed the greatest collegiate sports dynasty of all time.

Until the recent performance of the Harvard men's squash team, of course. The Crimson has won four straight national championship, and is a prohibitive favorite to win a fifth. By defeating Trinity 9-0 this past Saturday, Harvard (10-0 dual, 5-0 Ivy) extended its incredible dual match winning streak--which dates back to March 1993--to 23.

That type of margin is not rare. Harvard has won its matches by an average score of 8-1 and has lost three matches in a contest only once and two matches twice. In addition, Harvard won the National Five Man Championships (which included professionals) in Atlanta in early January, and even the B team finished in the 9-12 bracket.

Moreover, although Trinity is ranked number five in the country and came into the match with a perfect 11-0 record, it managed to win only two games to Harvard's 27. That means that every individual match was won by a 3-0 score except for two.

As always, it was Showtime for the squashers.

This statistical dominance is overwhelming enough; it is even more numbing when paired with the unstifled humility of the team.

"We feel we can be beaten," said freshman Daniel Ezra, who was seeded number two against Trinity. "We're not invincible. Our coach [Bill Doyle, who happens to be a Trinity alum] is not one to be overconfident. He really keeps us on our toes."

And in a sort of mini-upset that can ever so slightly nudge overconfidence out of the way, number three seed freshmen Rishaad Bilimoria actually had a bit of a hard time dispatching Austin Perkins, 3-1.

"Rishaad had a close match, but he played tough, as he and the team have all year," said junior captain Tal Ben-Shachar, who is Harvard's number one seed.

Ezra easily won his 3-0 match 15-10, 15-6, and 15-3, and pointed out that the team uses lopsided matches to fine tune its already formidable skills.

"We use these matches to improve our practice, patience and shots," he said. "Although my match was not particularly difficult, we still improve our skills through these games."

Harvard has already beaten number two ranked Princeton, 6-3, and number three ranked Western Ontario, 7-2, but those two teams seem to be the only possible challengers to the Crimson's reign.

Harvard's opponent in last year's national championship contest (which the Crimson won in thrilling fashion, 3-2) was Yale, but the Elis graduated seven of their nine top players and do not seem a viable threat in the 1995 version of squash's Big Dance.

"The difference between Princeton and Western Ontario is not much," Ezra said. "Yale should not be too great a threat because of their losses to graduation."

Harvard plays number four ranked Amherst tomorrow, and then plays Yale (which, for all its distance from Harvard, is still ranked seventh nationally) next week before going on to the NISRA Team Championships at Princeton from February 24-26.

"Our goal is to maintain our level right now and to peak at the Princeton weekend," Ben-Shachar said.

And finally, for those hoping that Harvard will take a Yale-like fall next year, keep this in mind: Only one of the top nine players is graduating this year (Mike Masland, who is usually seeded number four). Add to that freshman Ezra and Bilimoria, who are typically seeded number two and three, and you still have a veritable powerhouse.

Like Hazzard to Greenberg to Alcinder to Walton to Johnson, the beat rolls on.