A New Beginning? Hardly. Holy Cross Crushes M. Cagers

At halftime of the Harvard's men's basketball team's opening game against Holy Cross last night, things were looking up in the Crimson lockerroom.

Despite committing 17 turnovers in the first stanza, and despite the talent of its foe--a Holy Cross team that was a consensus pick to take top honors in the Patriot League--Harvard was only down by three, 39-36.

But then the sky fell down on the Crimson.

Paced by 20 second-half points from forward Bill "Sky" Walker, who almost hit his head on Briggs' rafters on at least two dunk-attempts, Holy Cross dominated Harvard in the second half.

The Crusaders ended up winning, 92-72. It was the program's 1,000 victory. Harvard, meanwhile, is a long way from ever reaching that goal.

"It's sort of a disappointing game," Harvard Coach Frank Sullivan said. "We played a good first half, especially considering we committed so many turnovers, but we just seemed to give in in the second half."

Harvard Captain Tyler Rullman tallied a personal-best 30 points last night, but offered only this somber assessment of the game: "We just broke down in the second half. We seemed to lose a lot of our intensity and our drive as the game wore on. We'll definitely have to address that problem as the season goes on."

Holy Cross got the game started on the right foot when forward Rick Mashburn canned a three-pointer from the left side of the court for the first points of the game. The Crusaders then extended their lead to five before the Crimson surged ahead, 11-10.

On the next seven possessions, the teams traded baskets until, with 9:56 left in the half, Walker garnered a quick steal and a dunk off the Crimson.

On the very next play, Crusader forward Frank Powell scored on a lay-in following another steal to give Holy Cross a 21-16 lead.

From then until halftime, the Crusaders kept Harvard at arm's length.

That length metamorphosed into the wing-span of an albatross in the second half as Holy Cross scored on its first three possessions of the stanza to put the score at 45-36.

From then on out, the lead gradually widened as the Crusaders cranked up their signature fast-break offense and high-pressure defense.

"In that second half, they seemed to take the tenacity of their offense and their defense up a notch," Sullivan said. "We just aren't used to that level of pressure. We sure can't simulate it in practice."

Simulations or not, Harvard needs to find some solution to last night's woes. "We've just got to stay with it. We can only get better," Harvard junior point-guard Tarik Campbell said.

Campbell, returning from a year off, had what Sullivan termed a "frustrating" time in his first game since the 1990-91 season.

Picking up three fouls early in the first half, Campbell was forced to play cautiously for the rest of the contest.

Still, he picked up eight points and seven assists while controlling a Crimson team which seemed surprisingly in-synch for the first game of the season.

Walker, who ended with 25 points, picked up on this cohesiveness in his sky-view assessment of the Crimson.

"If the first game is any indication, [Harvard] is a lot better than last year," he said. "They don't really have the same kind of talent, but they seemed to play a lot better as a team."

Sullivan said he saw a "lot of positives in the game, but we also have a lot of things to work on. Holy Cross is as good of a team as we'll play this year. Based on that, I don't think we did too bad."