Second Half Lapse Dumps Five, 78-63

STORRS, Conn., Dec. 9--After playing magnificent basketball for 30 minutes, the Crimson quintet suffered a nightmarish collapse, went scoreless for eight straight minutes and lost to Connecticut 78-63 last night.

Amidit the screams of 4500 UConn fans and the blaring of a 20-plece Dixieland pep band, Connecticut overcame a 38-35 halftime deficit and repeatedly threatened to pall away from the Crimson.

But time and time again, clutch scores by Gene Dressler, Keith Sedlacek, and Merle McClung, kept Harvard alive. With 8:33 to play, a jump shot by Sedlacek tied the score at 59-all.

And then-utter collapse. The exhausted Crimson team threw the ball away seven times in the next four minutes. UConn's brilliant shooters, Dan Hesford and Wes Bialosuknia sank 20-foot jumpers; Ron Ritter scored on a tip-in; Hesford stole the ball from Leo Scully and made an easy two-pointer which put UConn alead, 67-59, with six minutes to play.

The Huskies' shooting cooled off quickly but Harvard was unable to recover. The Crimson did not score again until Bill Fegley hit a jump shot with 45 seconds left.

There are few phenomena in sports more inexplicable than a slump. Harvard's collapse seemed particularly perplexing because it came immediately after 30 minutes of outstanding play.

Both teams employed a press most of the time, and this tactic is physically and mentally exhausting. Yet Harvard, with so little depth, was unable to substitute much at all. Until the last two minutes of the game, coach Floyd Wilson used only six men--the starting five plus Fegley, who entered the game occasionally to relieve the backcourt men.

In the first half, Harvard's play was its finest since the 33-32 upset of Princeton last February. The Crimson hit on 531 per cent of its shots. Dressler, who sank five for six in the half and scored 17 points in the game, looked brillant on both offense and defense. McClung did a fine job guarding the Huskies' All-East center 6 ft 8in. Toby Kimball and outscored the UConn star 22-17.

Harvard's hottest streak came late in the first half when the Crimson scored 12 points in three minutes, eight of them by Dressler, to pull ahead 36-26.