Few Positives Cannot Mask Harvard’s Disappointing Season

A few big victories highlighted the season for the Crimson men’s basketball team, but in the end it was yet another year in which a disappointing Ivy League losing streak crushed any hopes of achieving Harvard’s first conference title.

The Crimson’s most notable win came during the tough pre-Ivy schedule in a game in which current Harvard coach Tommy Amaker faced off against his former squad. The resounding 62-51 victory over Michigan in front of a packed Lavietes Pavilion was a huge morale boost for Harvard. The Crimson looked ready to shake things up in the Ancient Eight with a new coach and a talented team.

Despite the early bright spot, things only went downhill, as Harvard stumbled to seven straight losses before commencing Ivy League competition, including close losses to local foes Boston University and Northeastern.

The start of the Ancient Eight season brought new hope for the Crimson squad as it demolished its first Ivy opponent, Dartmouth, by 26 points. Sophomore forward Pat Magnarelli and junior guard Andrew Pusar—who was recently named the 108th captain of the team—led the way with 17 and 16 points, respectively.

Magnarelli’s Ivy success would be short-lived, however, as an injury in the first minute of the following weekend’s 73-56 loss to the Big Green sidelined the sophomore for the remainder of the season. The forward led the team with 6.3 rebounds per game and was second with 10.8 points per game, production that was sorely missed in the later games of the Ivy season and made the road to the Anicent Eight crown significantly harder.

The defeat at Dartmouth marked the first of a seven-game Ivy losing streak that would strip Harvard of its chances to nab the top spot.

Perhaps the most disappointing defeat of the season came in the sixth game of the streak, as the Crimson wasted a strong first-half performance against eventual Ivy League champion Cornell. Key turnovers in the final seconds allowed the Big Red to wrench the game from Harvard’s grasp, 72-71.

While a 1-7 Ivy record forced the Crimson to look to next year for its title dreams, it was not enough to crush morale. Harvard bounced back by sweeping Penn and Princeton at home for the first time since the 1986-87 season. The two home victories marked the end of a forgettable streak.

“Two good wins,” Amaker said after the weekend sweep. “[We] needed wins, home wins, a good weekend for a lot of other reasons, and a positive feeling about our kids as we try to finish out this stretch of the season.”

In what became a familiar trend, the Crimson erased much of the momentum from the wins over the “Killer P’s” by ending the season on a four-game skid against Columbia, Cornell, Brown, and Yale. The final loss against Yale closed out an 8-22 overall and 3-11 league season for Harvard, leaving the Crimson in a three-way tie in the Ivy cellar with Princeton and Dartmouth.

While there were only a handful of bright spots on the team level, individual improvements on the roster highlighted an otherwise lackluster season.

Sophomore guard Jeremy Lin, who was named the team MVP, finished with a squad-best 12.6 points per game, led the team in assists and was third in rebounding. It was a common sight to note a near triple-double for Lin on the statistics line.

“He’s our best creator, our best playmaker, and he’s our best finisher,” Amaker said.

With much of this year’s talent returning and Amaker’s first recruiting class entering Harvard Yard next fall, everyone is looking forward to moving past a tough 2007-08 campaign and on to next season.

“We have potential and hopefully we can build on that,” Pusar said. “We can tighten up a little bit on some of the holes, and hopefully we’ll come back next year and have a great year.”

—Staff writer Paul T. Hedrick can be reached at phedrick@fas.harvard.edu.