Farewell to the Captain and Maybe to the IAB

Maybe they'll give paint chips to the first 100 fans.

A fitting memento because today begins the last weekend ever of men's varsity basketball at the Indoor Athletic Building. Perhaps.

Present plans, subject to all kinds of revisions, call for the cagers to play their next season on a wooden floor grafted to the ice at Bright Hockey Center.

John P. Reardon '60, director of athletics, puts the prognosis this way: "We're progressing with the plans, but the final decisions have not been made." Will Harvard be playing in the IAB next winter? "I'd say it's a 50-50 proposition."

Great Leap Forward

Fifty. Funny he should mention it. Because 1980 marks the 50th anniversary of the IAB's construction. Harvard historians have had little difficulty verifying that, but the best records available indicate the shiny new IAB opened on Dec. 13, 1930, when the Crimson dealt Holy Cross a 35-22 defeat.

In a university nearly obsessed with records, anniversaries and the like, isn't it a little surprising that this landmark has gone by unnoticed? Not at all, because the IAB is an embarrassment and everyone knows it. Men's hoop coach Frank McLaughlin says of the Harvard administration: "They recognize we can't keep playing in the worst basketball facility in the country."

Perhaps that's an overstatement, but the IAB is no bargain. Fans must walk up four long flights of stairs to the court. Maximum capacity is about 1600, smallest in the Ivy League, and that does not mean 1600 seats. More like bleachers which are pulled out for games. Not exactly the big time.

Reardon says, "I'd like to see [the team] in an improved situation next year. Ideally, we'd have a new building to play in, but no one has come up with that kind of money, and with the constraints--increased energy costs, and what not," his voice trails away. He concludes, "Bright is a solution that is an improved situation and not ideal."

As for McLaughlin: "As far as we're concerned, we're playing over there [Bright]. I just think they [the Administration] change every day about this."

Hockey coach Bill Cleary worked for six years to get old Watson Rink transformed into Bright Center. His reaction to the basketball proposal: "I'm not gung-ho about it...Now I'm finding out that it's conflicting with our schedule." He sympathizes with the basketball team but concludes, "Let'em play, but not at our rink." To be continued.

***

However the location issue is resolved, one thing is certain: this weekend Bob Allen, the team's senior captain, will be taking his final bows on the creaky floor of the IAB. A three-year veteran, and the only senior on the squad, Allen arrived the same year as coach Frank McLaughlin, who says of his field leader: "I suppose our careers have been sort of parallel; we've had our ups and downs, but we hope to end this season with two wins."

Allen will exit having started every game for the past two seasons, a total of 56. That resiliency is reflected in his play--hustling, consistent with a surprisingly accurate outside shot, often underutilized.

As for the soft-spoken South House resident, he's "looking forward to taking two." He notes that the team is 6-2 at the IAB, and he believes that the fourth place Bruins (Friday night, 8 p.m. on WHRB, and Channel 25) and third place Elis (Saturday night at 8 p.m. on WHRB) stand ripe for upsets.

A tall order. Brown is especially hot, winning its last four Ivy contests, including victories over Penn and Princeton. And the Bruins just toasted the Crimson, 75-58, in Providence, R.I., earlier this season. Yale, too, playing good ball and heading for its best season since 1965, defeated Harvard, 86-75, in New Haven, Conn.

Yet the cagers are playing their best of the season as well. They haven't lost at the IAB since February 9 (that's only four games though) and Don Fleming has been scoring out of his mind. Thirty-one points at Penn, 26 at Princeton and 24 in the victory over Dartmouth at the IAB this past Tuesday have propelled the 6-ft. 4-in. sophomore back into second place among Ivy League scorers.

A born-again Christian, Fleming attributes his comeback from a mid-season slump to "praying to God and trusting in Him," and Fleming's play has made the difference of late. Allen offers a less transcendental explanation of the Fleming renaissance: "He's playing his type of game again, working inside, shooting well. He's really been doing what we expected all along."

So the following things are definite this week at the IAB: the cagers (5-7 Ivy) definitely have a chance to finish the season at .500, but not overall (they stand at 10-14). Bob Allen will definitely say goodbye. And this is definitely the last varsity game in the flea trap on Holyoke St. Maybe.