BASKETBALL '06: Curtain Call

Brian Cusworth has 18 games left.

After four seasons filled with injuries, disappointment, last-second heartbreak, and, not to be forgotten, occasional stretches of utter dominance at both ends of the floor—after four seasons, in short, which have left observers with a feeling that the 7’0 center’s potential to alter the dynamic of a game on any given night has not yet been fulfilled­—Brian Cusworth has 18 games left to show the league, foreign teams, and himself just what he is capable of achieving on the court.

No matter how well he plays, regardless of whether or not he finally becomes the game-changing dynamo that Crimson coach Frank Sullivan envisioned when he recruited the rangy seven-footer out of the John Burroughs School in St. Louis five years ago, Cusworth will not be in uniform when the Crimson men’s basketball team opens up the stretch drive of its Ivy League schedule at home against Columbia on February 2. By that point, he will have graduated from Harvard following his eighth semester, and league rules prevent him from taking an extra semester for anything other than academic reasons, despite the fact that he is eligible to compete for a full year in the eyes of the NCAA.

Cusworth’s unfortunate predicament is a reminder of the major demon that has pursued him ever since he came to Cambridge in the fall of 2002. The plague of injuries began Cusworth’s sophomore year, when a preseason stress fracture of his right foot prevented him from playing in a single game. Cusworth withdrew from the college for the spring semester after the extent of the injury was determined and successfully applied for a Medical Hardship Waiver, allowing him to play during a fifth year. But because of the league’s prohibition of redshirting, even for medical reasons, along with the ban on extra semesters for non-academic reasons, there was no way, short of enrolling in a Harvard graduate school, that Cusworth could recoup the full amount of time he missed his sophomore year.

The choice of whether he wanted to finish his degree in the fall or the spring, though, was Cusworth’s alone. By choosing the latter, the center would have been able to compete in the most crucial section of Harvard’s schedule, the last 10 Ivy League contests, including all four games against twin terrors Penn and Princeton. The former option would afford him the ability to play in 18 out of the team’s 28 games, and maintain the continuity of going through preseason activities.

“I’ve been receiving a lot of flak for choosing the first semester,” Cusworth says. “I know the argument is ‘Why wouldn’t you want to stay for the Ivy League schedule?’ Ultimately I would only be able to come in a couple practices before that first game [after the break]—I would not be allowed to practice legally with the team at all before then. It’d just be kind of trying to throw myself back into the system—It would be a change of the chemistry at the last minute.”

The Crimson, then, will have its man in the middle for its 14 non-conference games, which include tilts against major D-I programs Michigan and Providence, and the first four contests of that grueling stretch of Ivy competition known as the “14-game tournament.” After that, Harvard will have to find someone to fill in for Cusworth—an uncomfortable position, to be sure, but one that the Crimson is all too familiar with.

“He’s been injured every year he’s been here. It’s no different than when he got injured last year, when he got injured the year before...just keep playing on,” Sullivan says.

While his foot has ceased to be an issue, Cusworth missed four games in 2004-05 with a thumb injury, and then was sidelined for seven games last year with a fractured hand. The seasons that Cusworth should have spent building upon the promise of his solid freshman campaign—the only year he stayed healthy—have thus been continually interrupted. The big man has never been able to completely incorporate himself into the flow of the season, as each injury has necessitated a period of reintegration.

The continual breaks and fractures have no doubt been caused at least partially by the physical strictures of height, and developing his 7’0 frame through weight training has been a critical process for Cusworth. He focused on building strength intently in the off-season, in the hopes of avoiding the frustration of once again watching his teammates while sitting on the bench in street clothes.

The frustration, brought on by Cusworth’s inability to stay on the court for a full season, has only underlined the frustration of his play when he has graced the hardwood. While the numbers are impressive—over 13 points per game each of the last two seasons, second in the league in rebounding two years ago, a pair of All-Ivy nominations—one can’t help but feel that Cusworth, with his stature, low-post moves, shot-altering ability, and silky shooting touch, is capable of loftier statistics and a higher level of dominance.

“He’s as effective a low post player as there is at our level if he gets tight to the rim,” Sullivan says. “When he wanders a little bit that’s when he loses his effectiveness, trying to do too much with the dribble.”

Cusworth’s frequent jaunts away from the hoop on offense are reflected in his 60 turnovers last year, three per game, and .466 shooting percentage, a figure that reveals the number of perimeter jumpers taken. He has the ability to hit the three-pointer—5-of-14 from beyond the arc last season—but such an extension of Cusworth’s game takes away from his development into the low-post juggernaut his skills and height suggest he can be.

“I have a tendency to let the game come to me and work from the outside in,” Cusworth says. “I would start off the game [and] if I’d see an open shot I’d take it instead of working from the inside out and really just trying to establish dominance close to the rim.

“One of the biggest things that I’ve been working on over the summer playing pickup and in practice is trying to do the early work, get good position and get my field goal percentage to the high 50’s, 60 percent,” he adds.

Sullivan has challenged his center to raise his field goal percentage into that rarefied territory, as well as to increase his rebounding figures—7.6 and 8.4 the last two years, respectively—into the double-digits, and so far the coach is extremely pleased with the determination of his fifth-year player to reach those goals.

“He’s highly motivated this year—he’s worked extraordinarily hard [in the off-season], and you can see the difference in his body, you can see the difference in his conditioning,” Sullivan says. “He wants to play after college, so he has to create a package that is attractive to a European team, or whatever he wants to do. He has that level of skill, but he knows he has to package himself.”

Cusworth has committed himself to transforming that skill into the proportionate level of results. He spent this past summer in the gym full-time, instead of taking any sort of a job or internship, in anticipation not only of the remainder of his college eligibility but of taking a shot at a professional career after he graduates, whether it be in Europe or somewhere else.

Cusworth does not know where basketball will lead him in the future. His immediate task, however, is much more clear. He has just half a season to wash away the bad taste of last year, when the team’s stellar frontcourt of Cusworth and captain Matt Stehle ’06, the motivating factor behind Harvard’s preseason No. 2 ranking, could not prevent the Crimson’s best shot in years at the Ivy title from flaming out in a late-season eight-game league losing streak. To do so, Cusworth must take over the lead of the Crimson frontcourt in the absence of first team All-Ivy forward Stehle, help his teammates develop a head of steam to compete in the second half, and, in the process, complete his evolution into the dynamic force so many have projected him to be.

“I’m trying to focus on establishing dominance. [I want to] make a name for myself,” Cusworth says. “Now more than ever, I have 18 games to prove myself.”

—Staff writer Caleb W. Peiffer can be reached at cpeiffer@fas.harvard.edu.