HARVARD BASKETBALL 2005-06: Athletic Harris Primed to Begin Collegiate Career

For most people, moving from the bright lights of Los Angeles to a mountain town of 20,000 people in Pennsylvania would not be something to look forward to.

Those people probably never blocked thirteen shots in a high school basketball game.

Before coming to Harvard, freshman forward and McDonald’s All-American nominee Evan Harris followed up four stellar years of high school basketball at Harvard-Westlake High School (Calif.) with a postgraduate year at The Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., where he prepared his game for the transition to the next level and won the team’s Most Valuable Player award in the process.

He didn’t leave Los Angeles solely to win more awards, however.

“The biggest thing I learned was to live by myself,” says the 6’8 inch forward. “A huge part of it was living on my own and experiencing my first east coast winter.”

The Hill School not only better prepared Harris for the college game mentally, but also got him ready for the physical aspect.

“Deciding upon [The Hill School], a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was pretty young for my grade,” says Harris, who would have been an 18-year-old freshman last year had he chosen to enter college right after graduating from Harvard-Westlake. “I gained like ten pounds there. I definitely got a lot stronger, got more comfortable.”

Despite being recruited by high profile programs such as Oregon, UCLA, and USC, Harris decided in the fall of his post-graduate year that Harvard was where he wanted to be.

Harris will start the year backing up all-conference big men Brian Cusworth and Matt Stehle. His teammates are eager to see what he can do at the collegiate level.

“He’s exceptionally gifted athletically,” Cusworth says. “He could jump over me if he wanted to.”

Despite the high expectations his athleticism has created, Harris has just one goal for the season.

“I told coach the first day I got on campus I just wanted to do anything possible to win an Ivy League championship and go to the tournament,” Harris says. “If it involves scoring or rebounding or even cheering from the bench, that’s fine with me—I just want to win.”