New Coach Seeks New Results

Harvard men’s basketball has never won an Ivy League championship.

It is a reality as much a part of the program as any coach, player, or administrator in the school’s history. It reverberates in the banner-less (not counting the women’s pennants) rafters of Lavietes Pavilion, it deters fans from making the cross-river trip to the gym, and it causes the best recruits to avoid the Cambridge campus, heading farther south to schools that can offer a potential spot in the March spotlight.

Harvard has had its greats throughout the years: Tom “Satch” Sanders, a member of eight championship teams with the Boston Celtics, coached the Crimson from 1973 until 1977; Don Fleming ’82 was a three-time First-Team All-Ivy selection, and, deep in the annals, Wyndol Gray ’46 led Harvard to its lone NCAA Tournament appearance in 1946.

But they reside in the past. The present Harvard program is one of mediocrity—teams that barely crack .500, way behind Penn and Princeton in the Ivy standings.

All this makes the selection of Tommy Amaker as the new head coach of the team, for many, such a significant event in the beleaguered program’s history.

In the context of this quaint Ivy League program with its history of disappointment, Amaker’s resume becomes all the more astonishing.

One would never expect a basketball program ecstatic to achieve a top-150 RPI each year to recruit a coach who has led a team to the Sweet Sixteen. It would never cross an alum’s mind that a coach who was mentored by Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, as a player from 1984 to 1987 and as an assistant coach from 1988 to 1997, would at one time prowl the sidelines of Lavietes’ hardwood floor.

But that man has arrived, and Amaker’s goal will be to create a winning atmosphere that will bring Crimson fans back to Lavietes, attract those recruits Harvard has missed out on in past years, and, hopefully, clear the cobwebs from the gym ceiling.

And do this without time, or history, on his side.

“We’re going to try to define our own success, and not let others outside define it,” Amaker said at his introductory press conference on Friday. “Sometimes you think things can be two or three years...you never know the timeline of things because so many things are out of your control. So you try to do the best you can with who you are and where you are, and we feel that that’ll be a pretty darn good situation for us.”

But even for a coach of Amaker’s caliber, the reality of Harvard basketball presents hurdles that are more than difficult to clear.

It begins with the tangibles: facilities and recruiting. More than any other coach in college basketball, Amaker knows the ups and downs one can face with recruiting. He comes to Harvard with a reputation as a top recruiter, as ESPN ranked his 2000 Seton Hall recruiting class, one that included future pros Eddie Griffin and Andre Barrett, the second best in the country.

But Michigan was a different story altogether. In 2001, he inherited a program in shambles. Despite amassing a 10-6 record in the Big Ten in his second year in Ann Arbor, the Wolverines were not eligible for postseason play because of a rules violation that dated back to the days of Chris Webber and the Fab Five.

In addition, the facilities and lack of institutional support at Michigan, a traditional football school, dug a hole for Amaker as he failed to return to the NCAAs.

Without lucrative scholarship opportunities, the Crimson may never be able to attract McDonald’s All-Americans. But the program is clean of scandal, and, in addition, Director of Athletics Bob Scalise is working on tentative plans to expand Laveties and its basketball facilities in Allston.

One thing is clear: Amaker will have the support of the Harvard brass.

“And that was my promise to him, that we will do whatever we can do to try to be competitive for the Ivy championship,” Scalise said. “And I will not put [Amaker] at disadvantage. I’m not going to go ask [him] to fight the fight with one hand tied behind [his] back.”

But the intangibles may serve as Amaker’s greatest challenge. Despite his success at Seton Hall and his NIT championship with the Wolverines in 2004, Amaker has been accused of breaking down his veteran players during the season, challenging them to a point that mid-season collapses became the norm in Ann Arbor. Two years ago, Michigan started the season 16-3 before falling in seven of its last nine regular season games to plummet into the NIT, and a similar plummet occurred just last year.

How he deals with his current group of young, talented players, highlighted by rising junior standouts Drew Housman and Evan Harris, will be the key to his success. And Amaker hopes that the Crimson will respond, not cower, in the face of his vocal and combative style of coaching, which mirrors that of his mentor Krzyzewski.

Most importantly, the Harvard players are prepared to be pushed.

“I’m sure he’s going to ask a lot of us, and I think the guys will be able to respond,” Housman said. “Everyone was there [at our meeting], and he presented where he thought the program was going, and we were all on the same page with that.”

Moreover, Amaker will look to take advantage of the team’s athletic ability and speed to execute his up-tempo, defense-oriented style of play. Concentration on defense, coupled with up-and-down aggressiveness on the offensive end has given Amaker success in his coaching career. And this formula for winning has been what Crimson players have been calling for throughout the offseason.

“Just judging from how Michigan played us, I hope that we play a lot more up-tempo, pressure the ball up, get a lot of open-court opportunities,” Harris said. “With the athletes we have—me, Drew, the freshmen—we definitely have enough people, enough athletes to run, so I hope that we can.”

Amaker will now have, unlike he did last year at Michigan, a proven true point guard in Housman to keep the team focused and organized.

“I was impressed with Drew as a point guard,” Amaker said. “I thought he played exceptionally well and did some fine things.”

The talent is there. The administration is behind him. And Amaker, despite the lack of scholarships, will finally be free of NCAA sanctions and a distracted athletic department as he attempts to recruit and form a Harvard program all his own.

—Staff writers Patrick McGrath, Caleb W. Peiffer, and Ted Kirby contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Walter E. Howell can be reached at wehowell@fas.harvard.edu.