Last Gasp for Best Chance

The preparation started exactly three years ago this past Wednesday.

The most recent “best chance” had stumbled out of the gate, dropping four difficult Ivy road contests, and faced the prospect of eight lame duck games and a lengthy rebuilding process.

The five seniors that had consistently logged 30-plus minutes a game would be moving on, leaving a vacuum of talent and experience that would take years to refill.

Harvard coach Frank Sullivan looked at the strong freshman class and knew that would be his next shot. The next year would be painful. The following year would be a slight improvement. But three seasons down the line—that would be the next “best chance.”

The costly injury to Brian Cusworth, the ugly 4-23 season, and the subsequent return to respectability became the emotional preamble to another possibly historic run.

Sullivan spent two years preparing and seasoning his team to be an Ivy contender. The constant concern was to strike the tenuous balance between exposure and humiliation, confidence and self-doubt, hunger and dread. To lose more than 20 games would have been disappointing, but to fail to learn anything from those defeats and to fail to improve would have been deadly.

Last season, the Crimson rebounded for the third-largest turnaround in the modern era of its history, winning eight more contests than it had during the dismal 2003-2004 campaign.

The energy was back in a languid program. With both All-Ivy big men returning and the existence of clear heirs to the positions vacated by the departing seniors, Harvard would have another “best chance.”

Another Cusworth injury tripped the Crimson up a bit after a 5-0 start, but Harvard still responded with an impressive win at Albany to finish the non-league slate with an 8-5 mark. The eight non-conference wins were tied for the most in the Sullivan era.

But a brutal road trip, which brought two difficult and costly losses, has brought the Crimson within a game of having to abandon its current “best chance” and look to the future.

Which brings us to this very weekend.

A single loss could spell the end of Ivy title dreams for seniors Matt Stehle, Michael Beal and Zach Martin. A sweep would put Harvard right back in the race.

“During week four and week five things start to shake out a little more,” Sullivan said. “And things become a little more dramatic.”

It’s fitting that such a decisive weekend would include a visit from Penn and Princeton. The Tigers have broken the Crimson’s hearts on numerous occasions, including the double-overtime game at Jadwin in 2004, the Kyle Wente heave, and the misses by Elliott Prasse-Freeman ’03 and Sam Winter ’03. Until last season’s 61-57 win over Princeton, Harvard had lost its last four home games against Princeton by a combined 14 points.

Then there’s Penn, the Ivy bully. Since the Crimson ran off two straight against the Quakers at Lavietes in 2001 and 2002, Penn has taken the last three trips to Cambridge by an average of 17 points per contest.

Picking one of those two off is one thing, but beating both in the same weekend is something that has happened just once in school history.

“This is the kind of weekend we all wanted,” Sullivan said. “This is why we’re all doing this.”

That’s the wall that Harvard’s “best chance” finds itself pinned up against. For three years, the Crimson has waited for a meaningful game in February.

And now the team that was three years in the making gets one last shot to avoid becoming yesterday’s “best chance.”

—Staff writer Michael R. James can be reached at mrjames@fas.harvard.edu.