HARVARD BASKETBALL 2005-06: Harvard Starts Behind Penn

Everyone knew it was coming.

When the preseason Ivy media poll was released on Nov. 8, no one was shocked to see Penn gather all 16 first-place votes—the first unanimous selection since 2000.

That year, the two teams behind the Quakers were Princeton and Harvard, and those same two squads—this time in reverse order with the Crimson in second, followed by the Tigers—trail Penn this season.

In some ways, Harvard might hope for a repeat of that 2000-01 campaign. Sure, the Crimson jumped out to a 5-2 league start only to endure a five-game losing streak en route to a 7-7 finish, but Princeton, the team chosen second that season, won its final five games of the year to seize the Ivy title with an 11-3 mark.

The common thread between the two campaigns is the loss of an Ivy Player of the Year, a playmaking guard who bore the brunt of the scoring load for the Quakers the year before. Michael Jordan led his 1999-00 Penn squad to a perfect 14-0 Ivy season, pouring in 16 points a game and dishing out five assists per contest. Tim Begley meant much the same to the 2004-05 Quakers team, contributing 14 points, five assists and five boards per game en route to a 13-1 league mark.

While the 2000-01 Penn squad had to deal with the loss of Matt Langel, another All-Ivy guard, both teams returned second team All-Ivy players—Ugonna Onyekwe in 2000 and Ibby Jaaber in 2005—who were poised for breakout seasons.

With the graduation of Yale guard Edwin Draughan and Brown guard Jason Forte, Jaaber might be the most explosive player left in the Ivy League (apologies to Bulldogs swingman Casey Hughes for being so rudely dismissed). The lightning quick Quakers guard set the league record for steals in a season with 85 and, despite his diminutive stature, helped out on the glass, averaging nearly five boards a game.

Jaaber will be joined by junior forwards Mark Zoller and Steve Danley, honorable mention All-Ivy selections a year ago, who comprise a frontcourt that lost a lot of depth to graduation and a transfer.

Chief among those departures was center Jan Fikiel, who, despite his penchant for setting up outside the arc on the baseline and hurling threes, stood a full two and three inches taller than Danley and Zoller, respectively. That height is important in a league that boasts 6’10 Yale center Dominick Martin and 7’0 Harvard center Brian Cusworth. The Quakers currently have no true centers, or any player above 6’8 on their roster, making those matchups with the Crimson and the Bulldogs potentially tenuous.

For the Crimson to claim its first-ever Ivy title, it will have to solve the issues related to its guard play. Harvard enters the season with the league’s best frontcourt in Cusworth and captain Matt Stehle.

But after graduating all three backcourt players, including shutdown defender Jason Norman, the Crimson finds itself with a gaping hole in the area that is the Ivy’s strength. Harvard coach Frank Sullivan has expressed his desire to use senior guard Mike Beal as his defensive stopper, meaning that he would rather use Beal at the three than in the point guard slot. Junior guard Jim Goffredo has finished his two-year apprenticeship and seems ready to take hold of the two-guard spot.

That leaves the key to the Crimson’s success resting squarely on the shoulders of a freshman, either Drew Housman or Erik Groszyk, at the point.

Sullivan is no stranger to giving a freshman the reins of the offense, as he turned to Elliott Prasse-Freeman ’03 and Tim Hill ’99—first and second in career assists at Harvard—during their rookie seasons.

The most interesting case study in the Ivy League this season is Princeton. The Tigers lost an All-Ivy center in Judson Wallace, who had limited effectiveness last season while battling a back injury, and an All-Ivy guard in Will Venable—the only player on the team who seemed to be able to generate his own scoring opportunity.

With those players, Princeton stumbled to a 6-8 finish in the league. The Tigers do return three starters and center Harrison Schaen, who took a year off last season, but for Princeton to be considered an upper division team, a lot of faith has to be placed in the “addition by subtraction” theory. (For the record, my preseason ballot had the Tigers second, so count me among the believers).

The most important point to consider is that every team has question marks surrounding it. Despite the fact that Penn garnered all 16 first-place votes, it is not immune to the uncertainty bug. The team that earns the Ivy title and the NCAA bid this year will not be the one that merely avoided injuries and kept from falling asleep on a grueling back-to-back Ivy weekend. Rather, it will be the one that recognized its holes and found the pieces to fill them.

And that should be comforting to Ivy hoops fans in Cambridge and Princeton.