The Bad Old Days

PRINCETON, N.J.--Leaving Philadelphia on 1-76, there's a billboard advertising Temple basketball.

"Winning is an attitude," the billboard proclaims. "Temple basketball on 91.1 WCWR-FM."

Oh, if it were only that simple for the Harvard men's basketball team.

Harvard took a couple of broadsides to its self-esteem this weekend. Its 74-62 loss to Pennsylvania hurt, but came nowhere near to the pain inflicted by Princeton's 87-50 demolition of the Crimson.

"Princeton brought out the worst in us," Harvard Coach Frank Sullivan said.

Forward Mike Minor put it a bit more succinctly: "We sucked."

The most depressing aspect of the Crimson's four-game losing streak has been the return of the poor quality of play which dogged the team earlier in the season. Turnovers, the Crimson's Achilles heel, have returned with a vengeance. Harvard lost the ball 47 times this weekend. It's left Harvard kind of shell-shocked.

"I'm really disappointed with the way we've played," forward Tyler Rullman said. "We've got to get back to the level we played at [against Hartford, Yale and Brown]."

"If we hadn't won those three games, 'We'd be absolutely miserable right now," Rullman added.

Rullman looked pretty miserable anyway after the games. But he raised the key issue: what's happened to the Crimson of our games ago?

The losses to Cornell and Columbia can be attributed to the road. But Penn and Princeton were a different story. Fatigue was not as much of an issue here.

Playing poorly was.

"We weren't making them work," Minor said. "At times, we just collapsed."

Pressure Defenses

The issue this weekend was the style of play of the opponents. Penn and Princeton bring mobile offenses and pressure defenses that the Crimson cannot cope with. While Harvard was not playing its best basketball, it might have survived against other teams.

"Brown and Yale are more conducive to good games for us," Sullivan said. "They don't pressure us like these teams to do."

Overcoming pressure means a lot of passing, something the Crimson is not particularly good at. Remember: 47 turnovers.

"We don't have people who can put the ball on the floor," Sullivan said. "That's a big problem for us."

The other big problem is the offensive set-up. The Crimson likes to score its points down low. Teams realize this, and routinely double-and triple-team post players, even at the cost of a perimeter jumper. So far, the Crimson has not beaten anybody from the perimeter, and is unlikely to do so in the near future.

The schedule, thankfully, eases up: Cornell and Columbia at home, and Yale and Brown on the road. Harvard has been strong at home this year, and the team has already beaten Yale and Brown.

Then, there's the best news of all: two weeks from now, this nightmare season will be all over.