The Ra-Hooligan: Dartmouth Wins Belie a New Look for Men's Basketball

One could look at the men's basketball team's 60-56 win over Dartmouth on the weekend and draw parallels to the 1999-2000 season. The Crimson occupy the exact same position it held last year after playing similar games against Dartmouth.

Last season, the Crimson stood at 7-7, 2-0 in the Ivies, at the same point. Harvard's record now stands at 7-5, and its two victories over the Big Green (2-9, 0-2) give it a perfect Ivy League record and the division lead early in the season.

When the Crimson played the Big Green before break in 1999, it shocked its opponent, winning 66-59 with a lineup that included four freshmen. Before this year's holiday, Harvard took on Dartmouth at home, pulling off an incredible one-point victory in the closing seconds.

To complete the sweep last season, the Crimson slugged it out with Dartmouth in Hanover. The matchup featured several lead changes, poor shooting and a general ugliness that left the Crimson exhilirated and Dartmouth exhausted.

Saturday's game followed a similar script.

When two teams play each other twice in a short amount of time, as Harvard and Dartmouth do each year, they familiarize themselves with each other's game plans and players, which leads to the good defense and low scoring.

The Big Green are almost the same team as last year: a long-range scoring threat that lives and dies by the three. In the second game last season, its star shooter, Greg Buth, was held to 1-of-7 from beyond the arc. The Crimson marked Buth again on Saturday, keeping him to 1-of-13 shooting and 0-of-6 from three-point range.

So when the final buzzer sounded after the four-point Harvard win, it might have been easy for someone to say that history was repeating itself.

But they would be wrong.

Harvard is in a much better position than it was in last year.

For one thing, consider what happened shortly after last season's Ivy wins. Having twice upset a stronger Dartmouth team with an inexperienced lineup, the Crimson went on the road against Yale and Brown and promptly dropped both games to inferior opponents. Even though the season is long, the losses left the team in a mess that took a while to sort out.

This year (and now, in a new millenium) the Crimson aren't going to surprise anyone, as it was projected to finish third in the Ivies and possibly higher. But the close wins over Dartmouth clearly illustrate one thing: Harvard is much more up to the challenge than in recent years.

Saturday's win was made possible by two players who weren't around for last season's Dartmouth games. Senior forward Dan Clemente had just injured his retina before the first game last year and did not return to action until mid-February. His presence Saturday gave the Crimson a strong offensive option that they didn't have last season, and his defense and rebounding against 6'9 forward Mark Kissling was effective in such a close contest.

Clemente was also the impetus behind the game's most important play. After the Big Green had come within two points with 32.5 seconds to play, the Crimson had to come up with some points to avoid a late-game meltdown.

Dartmouth pressed on an inbounds pass, and Clemente (in an act that required some cojones and a lot of confidence in his teammates) tossed a home-run pass to junior guard Drew Gellert, who was streaking down the court. The pass was perfect, and Gellert blew by Big Green freshman Jordan Naihe to make the catch and the layup.

"When they're fronting like that, that pass to Drew is always an option," Clemente said.

Another change from last year's squad was shooting guard Patrick Harvey, who has emerged as Harvard's best pure shooter. While Clemente was stopped most of the day and finished with only 14 points, Harvey helped build the Crimson's leads with 21 points on 6-of-11 shooting, including three three-pointers. More importantly, Harvey is one of the best free-throw shooters in the nation. He hit the clutch free throws at the end of the game to keep Harvard on top on Saturday, and as long as the other players can get the ball in his hands late in the game, the Crimson won't blow late leads.

The prognostication for the Crimson is better at this point in the season than last year. This weekend, Yale and Brown come to Cambridge aiming to topple Harvard from its leafy perch. But they're not facing the same team--they'll see the same Harvard faces as last season, but everything's different. Those green freshmen have become the solid core of the team; Pat Harvey is draining three-pointers and Dan Clemente is healthy.

Dartmouth is out of the way. Now let the real Ivy League fun begin.