A Chronicle of Harvard's Walking Wounded

I have some good news and some bad news.

First, the bad news. The Harvard women's basketball team is off to its worst start in five years.

Now the good news. It would be premature to start worrying about this team this early in the season.

Yes, Harvard's 2-5 record is well below the .500 mark and does not appear to bode well for the rest of the season. But that 2-5 mark needs to be examined more closely before we leave this team for dead.

The recent postponement of the Crimson's contest against the University of New Hampshire due to a quarantine imposed on the squad by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health because of exposure to whooping cough is simply the latest guffaw in Harvard's recent, and unfortunate, comedy of errors.

Since the preseason, Harvard has been dealt one blow after another, be it illness, injury or the dreaded Rhodes Scholarship.

Both captains, Suzie Miller and Sarah Russell, were extremely sick for the better part of the preseason, and several players have since followed suit. Senior center Rose Janowski, for example, could not even travel to the University of Rhode Island for the Crimson's game last week--an 82-77 loss--because she was so ill.

Injuries have also plagued Harvard. Sophomore guard Carrie Larkworthy has been lost for the season after tearing her ACL. Freshman guard Katie Gates has been playing with a broken bone in her shooting hand since the second game of the year. And junior guard Courtney Egelhoff keeps spraining fingers.

Sophomore point guard Lisa Kowal also missed the Crimson's last game. She has a strained muscle in her back that has restricted her breathing and also had to see a cardiologist yesterday. Even Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith missed practice on Friday because of an illness.

Most recently, the entire team was prescribed antibiotics as a precautionary measure to treat whooping cough, after Gates and freshman forward Sharon Nunamaker were confined to Stillman Infirmary at University Health Services (UHS) with symptoms of the illness.

The Harvard women's basketball team is a banged up bunch. And its 2-5 record is more a reflection of that fact than of a lack of talent.

The Crimson has been undermanned, or at less than full strength, in every game this season. Miller even missed Harvard's game against St. Peter's because she was in the middle of her final-round interview for the Rhodes. The Crimson lost that game, 78-69.

In only one of its five losses has Harvard not been within striking distance until the final seconds. A few more subs here, a few less flu-like symptoms there, and the Crimson may have had the gas to pull some of those games out.

But it's pointless to make excuses or say, "what if." Harvard is still 2-5, and that still stinks.

This is true, but ultimately, a 2-5 record in the middle of December does not matter. Only the Ivy League season is of consequence for Harvard, and its status remains yet to be determined.

The Crimson has historically been a poor team during the pre-Ivy season. Two years ago, Harvard went a mediocre 6-6 out of conference then proceeded to record the only undefeated, 14-0 Ivy season in the history of the Ancient Eight and qualified for the NCAA Tournament.

In four of the six seasons that Harvard has won the Ivy League title, it has compiled a non-conference mark of 25-22, barely above. 500. Last season's 10-2 pre-Ivy record was the exception, not the rule, and even then the Crimson was not playing good basketball.

But it did have an ace in its collective pocket--one Allison Feaster '98, who is only the greatest women's basketball player in Ivy history. Maybe if Feaster were still around, Harvard would be 5-2. Then again, maybe not. She would probably in UHS with whooping cough.

The reality is that there is no superstar on this team, and that hurts when injuries and illnesses strike. But if the Crimson can get healthy by January, it has plenty of talent to win a fourth Ivy title.

That will not, however, be an easy task.

Harvard has skill in abundance, but it is still a young team. Five freshmen came in this year to replace five graduated seniors, and while the Class of '02 is probably a more talented unit than the Class of '98, it is difficult to replace experience quickly.

This team needs to start winning the close games, and it will. The only question is can it start pulling out the nailbiters in time for the 1998-99 Ivy League season?

Once these players get healthy, I have a feeling they will.

Harvard has a good corps of veterans in its four seniors and two juniors that have carried much of the load thus far. And they, along with their teammates, are only starting to get healthy.

Nunamaker was released from UHS on Sunday and Gates will be out tomorrow. Russell and Miller are both finally healthy, Janowski is back at practice and Kowal was cleared to play yesterday by a cardiologist. Even Delaney-Smith has made a triumphant return to practice.

Harvard will play four games over the winter break, beginning this Friday night in Miami against defending Trans-America Athletic Conference champion Florida International. Don't expect a miraculous turnaround immediately, although a victory over FIU would make quite an impression on the NCAA Tournament selection committee come March.

More importantly, these games should help the Crimson regain its old form and pull out at least a couple of wins before the Ivy season begins on Jan. 8 with a home game against Cornell.

And if Harvard is running on all cylinders by the time the Big Red comes to Cambridge, it could be another pleasant winter for the Crimson.