The RaHooligan: First Impressions

After almost nine months of sitting around and waiting, I finally returned to my true sports home: the end of the press table at Lavietes Pavilion. Sure, I had distracted myself by watching some football and hockey this season, but save the actual players and coaches themselves, perhaps no one was as eager as I was for the Harvard men's basketball season to begin.

Last night was a chance for me to get some first impressions of the team that is predicted to finish third in the Ivy League.

It wasn't that pretty. Harvard's 60-55 loss to an inferior Holy Cross team left me hoping that the Crimson has suffered a severe case of first-game jitters.

"We played like it was a first game--the first-game jitters, the nervousness," Coach Frank Sullivan said. "Holy Cross played like a team that had a game under its belt."

Truth be told, neither team looked particularly impressive last night. When both teams shoot below 33 percent in the second half, when both have assist-to-turnover ratios of less than one and when nobody reels off a big scoring run, there has to be room for lots of improvement.

The first thing Harvard should take away from this game is that size truly matters. Even last season, the Crimson's only true center was Tim Coleman, and currently Coleman is vacationing in the land of the academically ineligible. Instead, Harvard has decided to go with a small, guard-focused offense, and has left the inside to forward Dan Clemente and an unproven pair of 6'10 sophomores, Onnie Mayshak and Brian Sigafoos.

Against Holy Cross, the size factor was decidedly against Harvard. The Crusaders gave heavy playing time to seven-foot center Josh Sankes and 6'8, 220-pound sophomore Tim Szatko. Both players had double-doubles, and Sankes only played 22 minutes. Sankes continuously frustrated Crimson defenders, pounding his way for six offensive rebounds and two paint-clearing dunks.

More importantly, the Crimson offense could not work inside. Clemente stuck to the outside, because his inside post plays tended to lead to nothing but missed shots and turnovers. Even guard Pat Harvey, who had a good defensive day, suffered by matching up against the larger Jared Curry, who limited him to nine points, four turnovers and no assists.

"Dan was working too hard to duplicate the 32-point game he had last year against these guys," Sullivan said, referring to the exemplary shooting day Clemente had back in 1999.

The Crimson also has to play like the experienced team it knows it is. Most of the sophomores saw heavy playing time last year, and Clemente and junior Drew Gellert have been staples of the program the last few seasons. On Tuesday, nerves led to some boneheaded mistakes.

For one thing, Harvard got in to early foul trouble and played like it. Not enough bench players picked up the slack when starters like forward Sam Winter, Clemente and guard Elliott Prasse-Freeman got their third fouls early in the second half. In one instance, stupidity may have cost the Crimson the chance at the win.

With Holy Cross up by two and less than a minute remaining, Harvard had to foul and let the Crusaders take their chance at the foul line, where they had not been spectacular. Instead, two defenders didn't foul, which wasted precious time. Finally, Clemente was forced to pick up his fourth foul by pushing Sankes. When Clemente was put in position to have to foul again a few seconds later, the Crimson was deprived of its best player and, more importantly, its only clutch shooter.

The game was also full of some ugly turnovers, including several hilarious miscues on fast breaks. If the Crimson wants to be a run-and-gun team, it's going to have to run properly first.

On the flip side, I saw plenty I liked. Harvard played well defensively, holding the Crusaders to 37.5 percent shooting. Last year, when the Crimson held a team to under 40 percent shooting, it almost always won. Expect that the trend will probably continue once the season gets underway.

Sullivan also kept his promise of a smaller, faster team. He started three guards, Harvey, Gellert and Prasse-Freeman, and backup Brady Merchant also came up big, scoring 10 points and draining a couple of treys. The offense looked faster, and only ran into real trouble when Holy Cross forced it to take a long time and shoot with only a few seconds on the shot clock.

"I have to give credit to Holy Cross for their half-court defense," Sullivan said. "We were out of sync tonight, and challenged by the size matchups."

In the final estimation, Harvard kept it close the entire way, and led into the final minutes before suddenly refusing to score. With a game this close and even the entire way, and no team having a lead larger than seven, the final push for Holy Cross and Head Coach Ralph Willard may have come from an intangible: the presence of Boston Celtics Head Coach and General Manager Rick Pitino.

Yes, Pitino, taking a break from his current position as Most Hated Man in Boston Sports, took in the game at Lavietes Pavilion decked out in a thousand-dollar suit and shoes to match. On hand as a friend and the former boss of Willard, Pitino may have refrained from giving advice out loud, but by merely sitting there may have boosted the confidence of the Crusader players.

In contrast, Harvard had only one such luminary on hand, and his basketball knowledge is suspect: former President Derek Bok.

Enough said.