Harvard's Guard-ian Angels

Carmen Scarpa

Carmen Scarpa has a very special photograph hanging on a wall in his room. It was taken his junior year at Andover High when his basketball team reached the state finals against a squad from Cambridge.

In the picture, Scarpa is giving an up-fake to the very tall and very talented opposing center, a center named Patrick Ewing.

Scarpa is giving up a foot and a half in the match-up, as well as a considerable amount of jumping ability and natural talent. With Ewing fully extended for the block and Scarpa crouched to make his move, the picture truly looks like a David and Goliath scene.

So what happened on the play?

"I scored," Scarpa says, "it was a lefty hook.

"I looked in and got the pass from my teammate," he continues, remembering every detail of a single play a half-decade ago, "and I just gave [Ewing] a pump fake. Unless he was trying to block it with his knees, I don't know why he jumped.

"But I just threw in a lefty hook and the place went wild--that was a great game."

There were a lot of great on-court moments in Scarpa's high school career. He started for two years on the varsity basketball team and was named all-league in his senior year. He was also a two-year all-league baseball player and the MVP of the Andover football team his senior season.

He was captain of all three squads in his senior year.

An impressive list of accomplishments for any athlete, but made extraordinary in this case by the fact that Scarpa is 5-ft, 6-in. and weighs 160 pounds.

But numbers in general are very unimportant when you're talking about Scarpa. "I get by with my mind," he explains, and you don't have to talk basketball with Scarpa very long to realize that you're dealing with an intellectual giant.

The statistics say Scarpa has contributed exactly two points, six assists, and seven turnovers in 46 minutes of playing time to the Crimson this year.

The statistics are lying.

Because statistics can't describe how much his mature influence has helped the heavily-freshmen Crimson.

"I have a lot of respect for both of them," freshman forward Neil Phillips says of Scarpa and fellow senior guard Pat Smith. "What they've done as far as sacrificing, helping the younger players on the team out. Just the way they never complain when things are down."

Or how much his hustle and determination in practice have made just about everybody forget his height.

"Nobody wants to go against Carmen head-to-head in practice," Coach Pete Roby says, "because they're afraid he'll rip them."

"Carmen is a great defensive player," Phillips agrees. "He's single-handedly improved my ball-handling. When you're not going to face any better defense in the league."

Or how much his intelligence about the game has taught the inexperienced cagers to play smarter.

"Our team just doesn't see things out there," Scarpa continues, trying to explain the cagers' 6-18 mark. "Sometimes I have problems saying, 'how can he not see that.'''

But Scarpa doesn't just sit on the bench during games, mumbling to himself; he's always standing, always shouting advice, always explaining things to the players sitting around him on the bench. "I consider myself the captain of the bench," Scarpa said after an early-season loss at Princeton.

No Spud Webb

"You've got to remember he's five-six," junior guard Keith Webster says. "People say, 'Spud Webb is five-five,' well, Carmen doesn't have that kind of physical talent. Carmen is slow, Carmen is small. As far as natural ability, he wasn't blessed with a lot. But he was blessed with a knowledge of the game, and he's made the most of it.

Scarpa's acute understanding of basketball has led almost everyone who knows him--literally--to suggest a coaching career.

"In some ways he reminds me a lot of myself when I played in college," says Roby, who captained his Dartmouth squad as a senior even though he was a non-starter. "Neither of us had a lot of talent, we just get by on guile and hard work."

But Scarpa, an economics major currently working on a thesis on the economic practices of NFL owners, has no plans for a coaching career right now.

"I think I could be a good coach," he admits (his father was a football and basketball coach for many years), "but after coming to Harvard and spending that money, I don't think I could do that to [my father]."

But don't bet a lot on this one. "I think I could be a good coach," Scarpa repeats after a moment's thought, "I mean big-time. I mean I want to win the NCAA title."

Aside from his height, there is nothing small about this man--in his dreams, desires, or expectations.

Nothing.