In Search of...Cagers Head South

In any other year the temptation would b to just roll over and die. For 15 straight years the Harvard men's basketball team has traveled to Penn's Palestra and come home with 15 losses. Make it 25 years and you've got the Crimson returned from Princeton's Jadwin Gym with win.

But this is not just any other year, and this time the Crimson is on another kind of roll.

The days of Ivy superiority are over for Penn and Princeton, and no longer does the Harvard squad shake in its shoes.

The Crimson is toting a second-place league record into the Palestra for tonight's crucial Ivy showdown with Penn before I heads up the road for tomorrow's date with league leading Princeton (6-2). And the 5-3 Cantabs will be looking to come away with two of the biggest wins in Harvard hoop history.

"Other years we just went down there to play," Harvard Coach Frank MacLaughlin says. "This year we're going down there to win."

The Crimson enters its toughest road rip of the year after four wins in a row and confidence blowing out its ear. " We know we're playing the best ball of the year," Greg Wildes says. "And we know it's tough to play down there, but we need this."

Back-to-back wins at Penn and Princeton--a feat the Crimson has never accomplished--would put Harvard on the top of the Ivy standings and make the Crimson the team to beat in the Ivy title chase. "This could be the most important weekend in Harvard basketball history," junior guard Bob Ferry says.

Yet, it's Ferry who remains the weekend's most important question and potentially the dark clouds on the horizon. Still hobbled by a freak accident that left foot sorely infected and sidelined from his squad's last two games, Ferry once again sat out yesterday's practice.

But last night the Crimson star said that he had "run a little" and felt "a lot better. "He added that he would " definitely play."

That's the cloud's silver lining for Joe Carrabino, who has received most of the opposition's attention in Ferry's absence. "We certainly need him," the 6-ft., 8-in, power forward says. "He adds so much to the team and takes a lot of the pressure off us."

It's the deadly Carrabino-Ferry combination that worries Penn Coach Craig Littlepage most. "Carrabino and Ferry are a very solid inside and outside combination," he says. "They'll definitely be the keys."

As will be the Crimson's ability to stop Quaker juniors Anthony Arnolie and Karl Racne. That deadly duo led a second-half rally to lead Penn to a come-from-behind 69-66 win over Harvard earlier this year in Cambridge.

"We won't be able to just stand there and watch them." Carrabino warns. "We've got to play the best team defense we have all year."

Meanwhile, the best team defense in the land resides up the way in Princeton. The Tigers lack any semblance of an offense and have been forced to become the nation's top defense. Allowing just 48.1 Points per game, Princeton has a revenge motive this weekend, what with Harvard's 52-50 win over them in Cambridge earlier this year.

As Carrabino warns, though, Harvard today is a far better team than the one that split with Penn add Princeton just over a month ago. "We can't just walk in there and win," he says, "but at least we're going in there knowing we can [win]."

MacLaughlin adds that in this year of Ivy mediocrity--one where no one team has yet to emerge as a dominant force--his squad senses that Penn and Princeton "are very beatable."

Even in the Palestra. And even in Jadwin Gym.