Savoir-Faire

The Harvard basketball team concluded its season on Saturday night with a 12-13 record, one that is mediocre by any standards, but one which, in the Crimson's situation, is even less than that.

Sure, Harvard won its last five games and finished in a third-place Ivy deadlock with Brown. Four of the Crimson's victims, however, were pathetic; the fact that Harvard had to go into overtime to defeat Yale a week ago and only narrowly overcame Cornell on Saturday is more indicative of the kind of season it was than the five-game winning streak itself.

Of the team's 12 triumphs, eight were gifts. Yale, Columbia, Cornell, and Dartmouth collectively represent everything that is amusing in Ivy League basketball. As for Springfield and Northeastern, they will never be confused with Indiana or UCLA. Only an early-season triumph over Cincinnati and a 64-63 win over Brown in Providence two weeks ago can be classified as impressive victories, although the latter contest might not belong in such a category.

The 13 setbacks, on the other hand, are another story. Now it is one thing to be blown off the court by Penn, but it is quite a different matter to be embarrassed by Brandeis, especially when a team has such an overwhelming talent and height advantage that it should be insured of a 20-point lead before the game even begins.

It is also a different matter to play six teams of nearly comparable ability, and lost to all six, or have to stage great struggles in order to beat teams far inferior in talent.

This, though, was exactly what the Crimson did throughout the season. Harvard had plenty of talent on hand, but talent doesn't necessarily mean victory. Other ingredients are needed, among them motivation, and communication between the players and the coach. These ingredients, however, were missing from the IAB this winter.

The source of a team's motivation can either be the players themselves or the coach. In Harvard's case, neither source existed--Coach Tom Sanders obviously doesn't believe in acting as the motivating factor, for implicit in his way of basketball thinking is the idea that the players should be able to motivate themselves, without any excess patting on the back from the coach. This way of thinking is consistent with his whole low-key approach to the game. Whether it produces victories is questionable.

With Harvard this winter, it apparently didn't, as the Crimson for the most part was unable to motivate itself. The players thought hustle to be the equivalent of a technical foul, and they could often be seen loafing during games. This should have been expected, however, because as one player said, "when you loaf during practices, you loaf during the game."

"Satch expects you to get psyched up on your own," another said. "I didn't do this at first. Then, when I didn't play well, I blamed Satch."

If Sanders wasn't providing the necessary motivation, neither was he effectively communicating with the players. One player related a story which seems applicable to many members of the team.

"After playing well in preseason," he said, "I started to play poorly. Satch ignored me. Only later did he tell me what I was doing wrong. At first he didn't take the time nor effort. It seems that when you play poorly, he's just not there."

Sanders not only proved slow in volunteering this type of information, but he also kept silent on other matters. The basketball team, although big, was far from being one happy family. The squad was hampered by its share of attitude, discipline, and personality problems, ones that were hardly resolved by Sanders's persistent silence. "Satch knew what was going on," said one player, "but he failed to communicate his knowledge to the team."

Additionally, it seemed that Sanders would rarely inform the players about the reasons behind his moves. One day a player would start, the next he would inexplicably be the last man off the bench.

"Satch has to open up, and communicate more with the players on an individual basis," said one. "This comes with experience, but he has to get off his pedestal." "What he wanted out of his players he simply didn't explain," said another.

Sanders's conservative basketball philosophy was the source of constant conflict. Those team members who mastered his slow-down style of offense were more often seen in action than those who preferred to fastbreak. The final record is the lone indicator of whose style is best. That and the fact that more often than not the second team beat the first in practice.

But here, too, was yet another problem, for nobody could accurately determine who comprised the first team. Many of the players were of equal ability, and not until the end of the season did one group of five players work together for any length of time. The disorganization and sloppiness often displayed by the Crimson offense gave ample testimony to this fact.

Sanders, however, cannot be entirely blamed for the team's failures this season. There were injuries, and the players could have taken matters into their own hands and rectified the situation. They didn't, however. Instead they made matters worse by blaming their problems on everyone except the people responsible--themselves. As a result, they languished throughout the season, winning some and losing others, and all the while, wondering what the hell the coach was thinking. Which is fine, because in the end, who's to knock third-place finishes and five-game winning streaks.