Harvard Awaits Post-Season Invitations to NIT Tourney

Two days after its regular season finale, the Harvard men's basketball team yesterday went back to work. Except preparation for its newest campaign didn't concern the defense.

Crimson Coach Frank McLaughlin and his staff went on the offensive, actively campaigning for what could become the Harvard squad's first-ever post season tournament invitation.

When bids to the 1984 National Invitational Tournament (NIT) are released next Monday. McLaughlin and his crew hope to find the Crimson's name among the 32 teams who will receive invitations to the prestigious tourney.

"We know it's a longshot," McLaughlin said last night. "But we've made a number of phone calls and received a number. We're excited about it."

The Crimson lost its shot at an automatic berth in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tourney-the nation's premiere postseason basketball event when Princeton edged out Harvard for the Ivy League title by sweeping its games with Yale and Brown last weekend Harvard, which lost to Cornell on Friday but defeated Columbia on Saturday, finished one game behind the 10-4 champion Tigers, who with their title are headed for the 53-team NCAA extravaganza.

Created as an alternative to what used to be the exclusive NCAA tourney, the NIT has lost some of its past prestige as the older NCAA event has expanded. Its 53 invitations this year will be the most ever, after that has created a dearth of top teams from which the NIT can choose.

That's why McLaughlin's optimistic.

With the NCAA not expected to invite more than one Ivy school, McLaughlin turned his attention towards the NIT.

"Actually, it hadn't even crossed my mind," McLaughlin said, "but some people mentioned it to me after the Cornell game and then again after Columbia. We got to thinking and decided it was worth a shot."

With the Boston media actively campaigning behind him. McLaughlin whose squad finished with a 15-11 over-all record for only its second winning season in 11 years, has gone searching for a season reprieve.

"We've really been playing well as any one of the since exam break," said the seventh-year Harvard Coach, whose squad won eight of its last 10 games.

"We played Duke as well as any one of the teams who'll be invited." McLaughlin added, referring to his squad's 89-86 last-minute loss to the highly touted Blue Devils a month ago "We finished second in our league but beat the champion twice. We've got the best player in our league (in Joe Carrabino) and we set a bread new NCAA foul shooting record (at .822).

"If we were in another conference and we beat the champion twice, had the best player in the league and set a new NCAA record," he adds, "there's no doubt we'd be invited."

So McLaughlin's banking on some-thing besides the Ivy's lack of basketball tradition. He's counting on the its abundance of academic tradition. "I'd think it would be a great thing for the NIT," he explains. "It would be a great thing for college basketball to have a school that's non-scholarship, where kids work their way through school, representing it.

"And who's better than the number one school in the world?"

That'll be up to the NIT tournament committee, which consists of ECAC Commissioner Robert Whitelaw, Wagner Coach Neil Kennett, Manhattan Athletic Director Jack Powers. New York University Athletic Director Daniel Quilty and Fordham Athletic Director Dave Rice.

of the tourney-whose first round will be played at campuses across the country and whose semifinals and finals will be played at Madison Square Garden in New York-is Peter Carlesimo, who has served as the athletic director at Fordham McLaughlin was a standout basketball guard there on the 1968 and 1969 teams that participated in the NIT.

"All we can do is hope for the best," Harvard Captain Ken Plutnicki says. "It's up to the committee."

"I'll tell you this," freshman guard Keith Webster adds, "We might not get it, but we deserve it."

Only three Ivy teams have participated in the NIT since Ivy schools became eligible in 1972. That year, Princeton lost in the quarterfinals. The Tigers won the title in 1975 and Pennsylvania lost in the first round in 1981.