Hoopsters Chew Big Red

When the Harvard women's basketball team traveled to Syracuse and Cornell this weekend for a road-trip doubleheader, it must have felt a little like Gulliver traveling between Lilliput and Brobdinag.

Friday night, the Crimson encountered the giants of Syracuse, a team ranked second in the East and boasting a starting five all taller than 5 ft. 11 in. The hoopsters fought valiantly despite the absence of their tallest player, center Elaine Holpuch (sidelined with a hurt ankle), and fell by a narrow margin in their most difficult contest this season.

Next stop, Lilliput. The gnomes of Cornell were the very antithesis of the mighty Syracusans: small, timid and unskilled, and the versatile hoopsters, now finding themselves in a much preferable situation, had no trouble stomping "Little" Red. 59-39.

So much for literary analysis. The game analysis is, sad to say, much less interesting. For starters, Cornell only used a total of seven players all game, the rest were injured and had to look on languidly from the bench. With no height and no substitutes, things did not bode well for Cornell from the very beginning.

Harvard's full-court press proved so effective the hoopsters left it on all game and racked up the points as a hapless Big Red squad could only gasp and wheeze with indignation. The cagers, who received the same treatment earlier in the year from nationally ranked Minnesota, must have experienced the sweet sensation of revenge.

Realizing this game was basically for practice, coach Carole Kleinfelder wisely used the opportunity to bring up two freshmen from the J.V. and give them some varsity playing time. Five-foot, ten-inch forward Sarah Albee and 5-ft. 11-in. Patty Davis both played well, gathering six points apiece, and were an especially encouraging sight to Harvard, which has lost most of its height due to injuries this season. The loss of Holpuch this weekend was especially hard on the hoopsters, but the 6-ft. 1-in. junior should be back in time to play in Tuesday's contest at Northeastern.

In terms of scoring, the Cornell match was a travesty. On the few baskets Cornell did manage to sink, Cornell was "wicked lucky," recalls forward Marget Long, adding that the Big Red would "chuck the ball wildly at the hoop," and it would somehow go in. The hoopsters had little hindrance in their shooting, and most everyone who played came away with eight or ten points. Frenessa Hall led the pack with 14.