Crusaders Persevere Over Hoopsters, 78-70

WORCESTER--This time, there was no 21 in 41.

The closest the Crimson came to a second Wonder in Worcester last night--after the football squad's fantastic finish against Holy Cross in October--was 10 in three.

Junior guard Keith Webster pumped in 10 points in the closing three minutes for the Harvard men's basketball team on the way to a career high 25 on the night. But even that spectacular effort wasn't enough to boost the cagers (now 1-2) over the Crusaders, as the hosts held on for a 78-70 victory.

The Cross, led by All-American candidate Bill McCaffrey, stormed past the Crimson in the first half of the strength of a 14-4 scoring spree midway through the first half.

Holy Cross boosted its 10-point halftime lead to as much as 16 in the second period. But Harvard rallied behind a keyed-up Webster to draw closer--although, ultimately, not close enough.

"They [the Crimson players] work hard, and they never give up," Harvard Coach Pete Roby said. "Instead they say, okay, this is our time of the game. We like to think of the last five minutes as the time when we're going to do some damage."

The amount of damage the cagers could do, however, was limited by the damage the Crimson had suffered in the foul department.

Crimson starting center Bill Mohler fouled out 10 minutes into the second half, and freshman guard-forward Tedd Evers followed suit six minutes later.

To make matters worse, rookie guard Mike Gielen--who had contributed 23 points off the bench in the squad's previous two contests--suffered a possible concussion late in the first half after a collision with Webster. He did not return to action.

"Now our guards, Webster and Smith, had to play the whole time," Roby said. "The way we play, we need substitution in our rotation."

Furthermore, both squads were the victims of quirky officiating--resulting in a number of questionable calls.

"I don't think it was a matter of one-sided officiating," Mohler said, "it just wasn't college-level officiating."

Nevertheless, the Crimson stuck it out, outscoring the Crusaders, 16-6, in the final five-and-a-half minutes.

"You got to push it down the court and go to the basket in that situation," Webster said of his personal scoring explosion. "If they weren't going to stop me, I was going all the way to the basket.

"If I had shot that way in the first 10 minutes of the game," he added, "we wouldn't have had to do all that."

But in the first half, the cagers saw an early 6-2 lead fall prey to a McCaffrey rampage.

The 6-ft., 1-in guard, who has averaged 21 points a game in his last two seasons--including a 46 points, 15 assist show at Iona last year--accounted for eight points as the Cross transformed a 14-12 edge into a 28-16 bulge.

Harvard didn't see a single-digit deficit again until Webster hit an 18-foot jumper with 1:09 remaining.

"Losing to Holy Cross by eight is not what I'm getting charged up about," Roby said. "What I'm getting charged up about is that we went out there and busted our butts."