One Last Chance

Two weekends ago, the Harvard men's basketball team traveled to Penn and Princeton with hopes of an Ivy League title but lost two blowout games. As a result, the Crimson will not go to the NCAAs this year, barring a catastrophic collapse by Princeton.

This weekend, Harvard will host those teams. Now, the team will have its sights set on something even bigger--hope for the future.

The two road games were disasters. No one wearing Harvard jerseys played well; those who scored the most points just happened to take the most shots, and the home teams could score at will. Even with two convincing wins last weekend (at Cornell and Columbia), Harvard is still three behind Princeton and one behind Dartmouth in the loss column with two weeks of basketball left.

Going into the season, this year's team seemed to have an excellent shot of winning Harvard's first-ever Ivy League title (a streak that goes back to the beginning of the century). There were three senior starters, two of whom combine to form one of the league's best frontcourts, as well as the defending Ivy League Rookie of the Year.

But it was not to be. One week-end was all it took to end those dreams.

Much the same thing happened last season. That team blitzed out to an 11-5 record through the month of January, but February turned out to be the end of the fun. The Crimson went 3-5 that month, with two losses each to Penn and Princeton.

Harvard went 15-11 that season, which was by accounts a successful one. After all, it was the team's first winning season since 1984-5. But it also had four more losses to those southernmost Ivy schools.

For the record, Harvard hasn't beaten Penn in six years and Princeton in seven. They are consistently two of the best teams in the Ivy League, and because of their geographic proximity to each others, the league's other six teams have to face them back-to-back in the same weekend. A Penn-Princeton weekend is truly the proverbial gauntlet, with a chance for a league title at the other side.

Conversely, continual losses to these teams can become a vicious circle. Lose four to these guys and you're never in a position to win the league title at the end of the season--like Penn and Princeton were last year when they had a one-game playoff. As a result, they have more experience, giving them an advantage over the other Ivy squads.

"We haven't played in very many big games," said Harvard coach Frank Sullivan after the Princeton loss this season. "I don't think you can ever minimize the success [Princeton] had in the tournament."

That is why Harvard must not be swept this weekend. Not because there is any chance to win the league this year, but so that next year's team or the one after that will have a chance.

Princeton will always have the memories from the NCAAs this year, and Penn will always have its hordes of screaming fans filling the Palestra. But if Harvard is to have any--any--hopes for 1998, then it must know winning.