Cagers Smash Yale, 87-65; Face Brown Tonight

When hockey and football can't seem to crack the old Eli bastion in New Haven, leave the cracking to us, Tom Sanders might tell you. His Crimson cagers did everything but maul the walls of Gothic Payne Whitney Gymnasium with a battering ram last night, strewing the hardwood with shattered Yale strategies and sweeping to an easy 87-65 victory.

The win pulls Harvard into a shot for third place in the Ivy League, its second best league record ever and a .500 overall tally for 1973-4, as it travels to Providence today. It if can work the same magic against the Bruins tonight, the Crimson will have swept two games from Brown, Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia and Cornell this year.

The two rivals had swapped baskets three times after the opening tip-off, when Sanders's squad exploded for 11 straight points to go up, 17-6, in the first five minutes of the game. Scoring mostly on wide-open layups after breaking Yale's full-court man-to-man press, the Crimson continued to race away from the hapless Elis, and went up, 38-19, with 1:24 remaining in the first half.

Still, going into the locker room at halftime with a handsome 42-25 margin, Sanders was not satisfied. True to the character of the Celtic perfectionist, Sanders immediately lambasted his players' sloppy positioning on rebounds. "Nobody was blocking out and balls were being knocked out of their hands," he said. And balls knocked out of hands mean fewer baskets. The compulsive, competitive spirit of Boston Garden lives on.

New Yale Strategy

The second half brought a new Yale strategy from coach Joe Vancisin to replace the shattered press. Setting up on defense, the Elis concentrated on speeding up their offense, aiming to work the sphere into their big men--Jim Cartmell, Mike Baskauskas and Rollin Chippey--for the inside shots.

The new tempo took its effect, and the New Haven hometowners narrowed the gap to 12 points, 46-34, with 16:38 remaining on the clock. But again, Harvard exploded into orbit, rocketing off ten in a row, led by Bill Carey's two crucial baskets, and padded the lead comfortably for the summation.

Harvard had little problem with any of the defenses Yale threw at it, and clicked on its patterned offense after running-and-shooting more than usual. Give-away layups and tipins made up 30 of the 87 Crimson points.