A Question of Confidence

"We haven't really reached our potential," Crimson point guard Calvin Dixon says. "Nobody has seen us play our best basketball yet."

Maybe not, but with the season roughly a quarter over, Harvard hoop fans and opposing teams have witnessed some impressive performances by the Crimson quintet, which heads down to Texas next week sporting a much-improved 4-3 record.

Following an easy exhibition win over the Portuguese National Team, the squad embarked on a quick three-game victory string, including a last minute triumph on the road over UMass.

Buzzsaw

The Crimson then ran into a buzzsaw named Boo Bowers, who scored 45 points as American University belted Harvard 108-88. A disappointing loss to Catholic U. in Washington, D.C. and a suffocating Holy Cross zone defense dropped the team's record to 3-3.

The Crimson's come-from-behind, 80-79 victory over UNH last Saturday may tell more about this team than any other contest so far this year.

It is a young team, one which depends heavily on the services of two freshman--with Joe Carrabino starting on the front line and Monroe Trout usually coming off the bench as the sixth man--so the comeback from a 77-70 deficit with just five minutes left says good things about the confidence and composure of the squad.

The UNH game may have been about as close to a must-win situation as a non-league contest is likely to get. Already demoralized by the unexpected loss at Catholic, the 72-46 blow-out at the hands of the Holy Cross Crusaders crushed a lot of the confidence the team had left, so the New Hampshire contest took on added importance.

"We lost confidence against Catholic, and Holy Cross was an over-reaction. The loss to Holy Cross really blew our confidence bad," Mannix says.

"UNH was a big game psychologically," says co-captain Tom Mannix. "There's a big difference between going into vacation with a 4-3 record and starting it at 3-4. There's a big psychological difference between a three-game losing streak and a four-game one."

That over-reaction which Mannix mentioned was easily evident in the Crimson play against the Crusaders. Convinced that his charges couldn't play a running game against Holy Cross, McLaughlin instituted a semi-stall, with lots of perimeter passing while the team looked for a layup or an occasional open jump shot.

Early in the game though, this care in picking shots developed into an obvious hesitancy to shoot at all from beyond the foul line, and the Holy Cross zone swallowed up most shots from in close. With Mannix out with a dislocated finger, the team had no shooter who could break the zone from outside.

Going into the UNH game, the team was looking for a way to break the losing spell. An adjustment in the Crimson offense and the surprise return of Mannix did the trick.

With Mannix back and firing from the outside, and Dixon controlling the lane in his role as the point guard in the Crimson's revamped 1-2-2 zone offense, the Crimson attack opened up, and played a looser, more relaxed kind of game.

"This team has to have team confidence," says Dixon. "I don't know if everyone is used to winning, but it's contagious once it happens."

The New Hampshire game was by no account a picture-perfect effort, but that is what makes the win so impressive an indication of the team's long-range chances for success. That a squad can come from a seven point deficit late in the game--especially when it is not playing its best basketball--testifies to its spirit. Says Trout, "The team is getting more intense."

There have been holes in the Crimson attack, and nobody on the team seeks to deny them. For the most part, though, they are correctable mistakes, or ones which may be attributed to a certain inexperience.

The major problem, for instance, has been the defense.

For former high school stars, who are used to dominating in every aspect of the game, the presence of players of equal stature and skill is difficult to adjust to at first, especially on defense. But later in the year, the adjustment will be made; expect some tough D from this young Harvard team.