Abe's in Town

The Texas Longhorns stampeded into town yesterday afternoon, and coach Abe Lemons just happened to have a few things to say about Harvard, his own 5-0 team, and tonight's game against the Crimson at the IAB.

Famous for his philosophical reflections on the round ball, Lemons was in an uncharacteristically matter-of-fact mood, chatting casually over the phone from his suite at the Parker House.

"We wanted to let the players really see the town; this kind of trip is for them--let'em see a different part of the country," he explained, adding that he trusted his country boys to stay out of trouble if left on their own. "No, we don't tell'em anything about the city or anything--just be back in time for the game."

The tourists from Austin will take the court tonight with a spotless record and wins over Colorado and Iowa State already under their collective belt. But don't ask coach Abe to talk up his boys: "Sometimes we play good; sometimes we don't. I wouldn't take us too serious or anything."

The Longhorns compiled a modest 15-15 record last year, but one of those victories was a 91-68 win over the Crimson at Texas. "They're not among the best in the country, but I wouldn't want to predict a win," Harvard coach Frank McLaughlin said this week. "We look at it as a fun game; we can just see how good we are at this point without worrying about necessarily winning."

Lemons, on the other hand, claims he will take nothing for granted. "Some of our guys are pretty washed out because we just finished exams and all," he explained, adding, "No matter where you go, you know, you got to take exams."

Any chatter among the Longhorn partisans about taking on a bunch of Ivy League intellects? "Naw, I don't hype any game anyway, not whether it's Texas A&M, Arkansas, Houston or Harvard." And what's more, he was quick to point out, Texas may have 48,000 students, "but you still need a 1200 on your boards to get in, whatever that may mean to folks up here."

Back on the subject of tonight's game, Lemons reassured Harvard officials that they need not be ashamed of the IAB's humble fifth-floor gymnasium. "Heck we've seen worse," he chuckles, recalling a game against Pacific, "when we played in a gym in which one corner must have been four feet deeper than the rest of the floor."

The hosts for tonight's affair recovered this week from a three-game losing streak by beating UNH, 77-73, Tuesday night. Picked by some experts to win the Ivies this year, the Crimson (now 3-4) played its best 20 minutes of basketball this year to make up a 13-point half-time deficit and overwhelm a startled pack of Wildcats.

Question marks--like the team's ability to shift defenses on the run and cut down on turnovers--remain, but McLaughlin and his troops believe they took a big step toward the Ivy crown in Durham this week.

"We had been playing well when we lost (to Holy Cross, Navy, and UMass), and it was important to see that we could pull out a tight one so that the players didn't lose their spirit and start playing badly," McLaughlin said on the boisterous bus ride home Tuesday night.

Forward, leading scorer, and hero of the game Joe Carrabino agreed: "We did a lot of soul-searching (at half-time) and decided to do what we could do and should have been doing--in the game and from now on."