MALE ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Casey Jumps to New Heights

For the most part, Ivy League basketball is a horizontal game—earthbound players embracing the fundamentals (the layup, the bank-shot, the bounce pass). The occasional dunk always excites the crowd because Ancient Eight basketball rarely occupies a vertical dimension.

For this reason, freshman forward Kyle Casey is a spectacle. The Medway, Mass. native is introducing flight to Ivy gymnasiums.

Take Harvard’s game at Dartmouth, for example. With the Crimson up two points midway through the second half, Casey caught the Big Green defense sleeping and cut backdoor. Sophomore guard Oliver McNally lofted a pass up to the rim that Casey snagged and flushed for an alley-oop.

Or take Harvard’s first game against Princeton. After a missed jump shot by co-captain Jeremy Lin, Casey crashed the boards from the top of the key. He leapt in the air and slammed home the put-back dunk over Tigers guard Dan Mavraides.

Countless other moments—other ferocious dunks and soaring blocked shots—capture Casey’s athleticism. Like a king in checkers, he moves in ways other players simply cannot.

“Kyle is a freak athlete,” Lin said before the season. “The things he does, no one else on this team can do.”

The 6’7” freshman had to step in and help Harvard in a big way this season. Injuries to sophomore Keith Wright, senior Pat Magnarelli, and sophomore Andrew Van Nest left a gaping hole in the frontcourt during the conference slate—a space capably filled by Casey.

On the year, Casey averaged 10.4 points and 5.1 rebounds per game, both tops in the league amongst freshmen.

He won Ivy League Rookie of the Week four times, and Ivy League Player of the Week once, following a 20-point performance at Yale and a 27-point outburst at Brown.

At the end of the season, he was honored as the Ivy League Rookie of the Year—the sixth in Harvard history and the first since 1998—and an honorable mention for All-Ivy.

“[The freshmen] really did contribute in a great way—starting with Kyle being Rookie of the Year in our conference—but it didn’t start that way for him,” Crimson coach Tommy Amaker said. “As all freshmen, they get knocked back a little bit by how challenging and physical and different and hard [college basketball] is.”

After opening the schedule with 12 points at Holy Cross, Casey did not crack double figures in scoring for the next 10 games.

His early struggles were the growing pains of a positional change. Whereas in high school Casey could back down smaller opponents and beat larger ones off the dribble, Amaker envisioned the freshman as more of a traditional post player.

“I was not used to playing down low that much,” Casey said. “That was a big adjustment for me. A lot of the guys outweighed me, but Coach [Amaker] worked with me all year on using my quickness and my speed to play defense and offense.”

His hard work paid big dividends. On Harvard’s West Coast trip, the freshman dropped 19 points on Seattle and 27 on Santa Clara. Soon thereafter, when the injury bug bit the Crimson big men, Casey began playing 35 minutes a night, as he and co-captain Doug Miller were the only healthy forwards. During this stretch in the month of February, Casey averaged 13.8 points and 6.0 rebounds per game.

“Coach [Amaker] always says, ‘Stay ready, so you don’t have to get ready,’” Casey said. “So I just stepped in and did what I was supposed to do.”

“The reason why he had success was, well, one, he’s extremely talented and developed in skills, especially for a freshman,” Lin said. “More importantly, he’s very humble and a hard worker, and that goes a long way. Everyone could see him develop and grow as a player.”

By season’s end, Casey had become not only the best freshman in the Ivy League, but one of the conference’s top players.

Athletic and industrious, it appears that the sky’s the limit for this rookie.

“He’s going to be the face of the program next year, and he’s going to break a lot of records,” Lin predicted. “Harvard’s really lucky to have a player like him.”

—Staff writer Timothy J. Walsh can be reached at tjwalsh@fas.harvard.edu.