Is Harvard Next In Line?
Slowly pacing around Lavietes Pavilion, Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens barked instructions. Four days before his team’s season opener, Stevens returned to his college roots, teaching at the Harvard Basketball Coaches Clinic. Unable to work with the varsity—NCAA rules prohibit varsity teams from working with a current NBA head coach—his focus was directed at the club team.
Players flew from spot to spot in the gym, moving with both pace and purpose. Like the public practice Harvard coach Tommy Amaker had held three hours earlier, there was hardly a minute wasted. Each movement was deliberate; motion offenses probed the defense with cut after cut until it bent, and then broke.
The varsity watched with rapt attention; Stevens, after all, was the coach of the miracle Butler teams of 2010 and 2011. College basketball celebrates its underdogs, but Butler was David’s first real chance to break Goliath’s hegemony in decades. Since Jerry Tarkanian’s UNLV Runnin’ Rebels won in 1990, every champion has come from a Big Six conference. Hell, since 1998, the Ivy League has won just three tournament games. In the same span, UConn has won four championships.
Harvard, with Big Dance wins in each of the last two years, carries a lot of similarities to the Butler teams of the late 2000s. Before it broke through against Syracuse in the 2010 Sweet Sixteen, Butler had to endure its share of losses—going 3-3 in the three tournaments prior. Before Gordon Hayward and Matt Howard were national heroes, they were plucky underdogs who were never good enough when it mattered.
With the Associated Press putting Harvard in the preseason Top 25—the first time an Ivy League team garnered the honor since the 1974-1975 season—the hype around this year’s team is as high as ever. The Crimson is one of only five non-major conference teams in the Top 25, but only one of two (along with Wichita State) from a one-bid league in last year’s tournament. The question is not has Harvard arrived, but where does it sit? With conference realignment and an ever-changing landscape; it is no longer ridiculous to ask the once-unthinkable question:
Is Harvard now the country’s best mid-major?
THE TERM
When the term ‘mid-major’ was first introduced in 1977, the Harvard men’s basketball team played its games in the Indoor Athletic Building (now the Malkin Athletic Center) and freshmen were prohibited from playing for the varsity. Forty years later, college basketball pundits have just as hard of a time defining what a mid-major is as when Catholic University coach Jack Kvancz invented it.
Kvancz first used the term glowingly in the aftermath of a loss to Howard University. “It was everything that basketball’s about at the level of our program,” he said then. “For a game between two ‘mid-majors,’ or whatever you’d call us, it had anything you could ask for.”
Calling a Division II team a mid-major in 2014 would get you laughed out of the gym. Other schools push the boundary on the other end. A D-I team like Wichita State—which pays its coach $1.75 million a year and receives $4.7 million annually in donations to a football-less athletic department, but plays in the Missouri Valley Conference—is more Goliath than David.
According to The U.S. Department of Education, meanwhile, the expense for Harvard’s entire basketball team is just $1.3 million. To put that in perspective, Gonzaga spends $6.1 million on its team—bringing in enough revenue ($8.2 million) to cover the expenses for both its own program and the Crimson’s.
The question begs to be asked: how does one truly define a mid-major?
For a while, ‘mid-major’ was the popular phrase for teams like Butler, Gonzaga, and VCU—teams that didn’t play in power conferences but regularly competed with the big boys. However, conference realignment and the establishment of new powers has changed notions of which leagues are power conferences.
“Its tough to tell what a mid-major is these days,” SLAM Magazine’s David Cassilo said. “You have Butler and they are in the Big East conference. They (Butler, Gonzaga, Wichita) are perennial top-25 teams through the last five years and there are a lot of high-major teams you can’t say that about.”
The fuzziness of the picture extends from teams to conferences. The difference between leagues like the A-10 and Conference USA, which send multiple squads to the NCAA Tournament each year, and the six high-major conferences (the Big Ten, the ACC, the Big East, the Big 12, the Pac-12, and the SEC) is on the gridiron, not the hardwood.
Consistent shuffling in league makeup and strength has pundits echoing the famous words of Potter Stewart.
“I had this argument with Doug Gottlieb today over Twitter,” said NBC Sports’ Rob Dauster. “There’s not really a definition for them but you know them when you see them.”
For Dauster, there is no argument over if Harvard is a mid-major. In his 2014-2015 Mid-Major Power Rankings, Dauster has the Crimson at the top. Gonzaga, VCU, and Wichita St. all ranked above Harvard in the AP Poll, but didn’t qualify here due to their “financial resources, support from the university, the fan base and the community, and consistent, high-level success during the season and on the recruiting trail.”
However, regardless of what ranking system is used, consensus is that the composition of the mid-major division—and Harvard’s place within it—hinges on four possible factors: the conference, the schedule, the funding, and the performance.
THE CONFERENCE
When thinking about mid-majors, the strength of the league is most frequently mentioned. When Wichita State completed its undefeated regular season, debate around its spot in the national pecking order centered on the weakness of the Missouri Valley Conference, where just one other team won 20 games. By contrast, in the A-10, VCU’s conference, six teams won at least 20 games. In the WCC, five did.
With that in mind, CollegeInsider.com—whose mid-major poll began to get national recognition in 1998—limits the pool of mid-majors to teams from one-bid leagues. Wichita finished last year in first place, the beneficiary of conference realignment that moved league rival (and top-three seed) Creighton to the Big East. Harvard was fifth, one spot ahead of Gonzaga and the only Ivy League team to receive more than a smattering of votes.
A year later, the Crimson returns stronger than the three teams that finished directly above it—Stephen F. Austin, North Dakota State, and Mercer. Despite losing two starters, the Crimson returns the Ivy League’s Player of the Year in Wesley Saunders and its frontcourt is so deep that four-star recruit Chris Egi is likely resigned to the bench. Some opine that it might even be able to knock the Shockers from their perch.
“This year, if you look at legitimate one-bid leagues, and I think the Missouri Valley might be so [then] Wichita will qualify, Harvard might be the best team coming from a one-bid league,” ESPN Insider’s Jeff Goodman said.
Not everyone agrees with this definition of mid-major, to be clear. Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan argues that conferences like the Ivy League, which are historically thin beyond their flag bearer—formerly Penn and Princeton, now Harvard—are low-, not mid-, majors.
“What Harvard has done has not legitimized the entire league,” Ryan said. “It has legitimized Harvard alone.”
Ryan cited the need for other teams to step up and challenge Harvard at the top. In his mind, a league cannot be a mid-major until it is not a complete shocker when its champion wins a game in the tournament.
“It’s a big story if one team from those conferences wins a game in the tournament—a stop-the-presses kind of moment,” Ryan said.
While Ryan’s perception of the Ivies more closely matches the national view of a group known more for its academics than athletics, the league has slowly been gaining ground. In Sports Illustrated’s rankings of each Division I team, five Ivy League teams were put in the top 150. Dan Hanner rated it the strongest mid-major conference in college basketball and the 12th-best overall. Ken Pomeroy had it as the 14th best—with four teams in the top 150.
Yet, for all of its depth, the Ivy League remains a 14-game series of trap games. Any loss is a bad one come tournament time. Falling on the road in Richmond is a quality loss; losing in Hanover is a blemish that can kill an at-large bid.
“In the Ivy, there aren’t any resume wins,” Goodman said. “So you look down and say, ‘Where other than [in nonconference games,] where are they going to get a resume win,’ and I’m not sure where it comes.”
THE SCHEDULE
The route to national respect, then, is the nonconference schedule. To get multiple bids, a conference must get its second-place team in as an at-large over a middle-of-the-pack high-major squad—essentially forcing the committee to choose Princeton above Illinois or Yale over St. Johns.
This is the weakest part of the argument for Harvard; for a team ranked No. 25 in the AP preseason poll, Harvard’s schedule is far from difficult. Connecticut, last season’s NCAA Tournament champion, and Colorado, a top-25 team before it was beset by injuries, have both disappeared from the Crimson’s schedule.
While Boston College remains on the slate, the Golden Eagles went 8-24 last year and are far from the formidable ACC team that once was the best program in Massachusetts.
A CBSSports.com ranking of college basketball schedules shows a steady and consistent decrease in the difficulty of Harvard’s schedule over the past three seasons.
Tournament teams like Saint Mary’s, Florida State, Michigan, and Saint Joseph’s have all disappeared from Harvard’s schedule over the past five years. While Harvard has retained UMass and added Arizona State, its schedule remains one of the easiest in the country, arguably the easiest for any team in the top 25.
So where does all of this leave Harvard if it wants to be the best mid-major in the country? Charlottesville.
Despite the Crimson’s lackluster schedule, there is one statement game that could make its resume come March. On Dec. 21, Harvard will face Virginia, the No. 9 team in the country, on the road, on primetime television. If Harvard needs an at-large bid come March, its candidacy will hinge on this game.
“It’s a big game,” Casillo said. “When you look at the schedule, you don’t see a lot of high-name teams. There is Virginia, ASU, Boston College, and that is really it. If they don’t win at least one of those games, they won’t be taken seriously.”
“If they can come out of there with a win, this [is] a team that is going to be respected all year long,” he added.
Of course, the team’s chance to rack up nonconference wins is handicapped by a couple of factors. First is the Ivy League’s two-in-four rule, which limits the amount of non-conference tournaments a team can enter to two in four years.
The team’s rising status makes it a difficult game to schedule for top-ranked teams, a bad loss that isn’t yet seen as a good win. Harvard owns the third highest home-court winning percentage in the country over the last four seasons, but it cannot convince many opponents to come to Lavietes, where the Crimson has won 49 of its last 52 games.
As such, when it has played quality opponents in recent years—Memphis, St. Mary’s, etc.—it has always been at their place.
“It has been challenging, it has been difficult,” Amaker said. “It is hard to get teams to think about coming to Boston to come and play us.... It’s been a harder road to travel for us to get some of the games that we thought would be a no-brainer, but in some cases it’s not that way. It’s a backhanded compliment.”
THE MONEY
However, the ultimate determinant of a team’s place in the mid-major hierarchy is its performance on the hardwood. The traditional mid-majors of yesteryear were not high-majors until they backed up their regular season success.
Gonzaga made its name in the tournament with five Sweet Sixteen appearances and one Elite Eight appearance in the past 15 years. Butler has done one better, playing in back-to-back NCAA championship games. VCU backed up its run to the Final Four with consecutive tournament berths; Wichita State followed up its own tournament run with an undefeated regular season and a No. 1 seed.
These kinds of accolades lift a team from a mid-major into talk as a high-major, with increases in funding changing perceptions altogether. Though money and resources are typically byproducts of sustained success, Wichita State has proven that a short burst of unprecedented results can quickly change the perception of a team.
After making the tournament only four times in the last 25 years, the Shockers—which were ranked at the top of the mid-major poll last season—are now in consideration to be a high-major this preseason. Why? Funding.
According to ESPN’s business reporter Darren Rovell, Wichita’s sponsorship is on track to reach a record $2 million, up from $1.4 million just a year ago. According to Wichita State’s sports management program, last season’s Final Four run resulted in $555.2 million in revenues—a number that screams high-major.
Similarly, VCU, a traditionally labeled mid-major program, has begun to make strides towards becoming a high-major. The Rams have become a consistent favorite to win the Atlantic 10 conference and have made seven tournament appearances in the last 10 years, and, like Harvard, have a premier coach in Shaka Smart. A previously unknown program nationally, VCU will play 15 nationally televised games this year and has in place a plan for a 60,000-square foot practice facility with a $25 million price tag.
“We still probably instinctively think of Wichita, Gonzaga, Butler, as mid-majors,” Goodman said. “When you talk about the support, certainly Gonzaga and Wichita St., they don’t have the support of mid-majors. They are high-majors all the way.”
Goodman continued to say that even teams like Wichita and Gonzaga, who come from traditionally one-bid conferences, can hardly lay claim to being on the same funding level as the typical mid-major.“They are in leagues that are one or two bid [conferences].... That’s why we kind of tend to put them as mid-majors,” Goodman said. “They probably aren’t.”
Other mid-majors have taken notice, noting the distinction between the funding available at these programs and the rest of the conference.
“The reality is that the money is at such a different level [for some high-major jobs] that at some point, you can’t compete,” said Tommy McClelland, Louisiana Tech’s athletics director, in an interview with ESPN.
THE PERFORMANCE
Where does this leave the Crimson?
The final piece of the puzzle comes down to performance. After earning impressive wins in the last two NCAA Tournaments, the Crimson has established itself as a consistent threat that is knocking on the door of a deep tournament run, and it may just be time to open up that door.
Like Butler, Xavier, and Gonzaga before it, Harvard is battle-tested. The seniors lining the roster—from wing Wesley Saunders to forwards Steve Moundou-Missi, Jonah Travis, and Kenyatta Smith—have ended each season of their careers in the NCAA Tournament. They’ve knocked off two top-five seeds and were six minutes from the Sweet Sixteen a year ago.
Amaker has built a mid-major in an era full of them. Traditional powerhouses like Kentucky, Duke, and Kansas are all at the mercy of the NBA, as early exits for the draft force them to welcome in top freshmen every year. This has consistent, experienced teams thriving, keeping kids on campus for four consecutive years.
Saunders and junior co-captain Siyani Chambers are both potential professional players, but, like current Lakers guard Jeremy Lin ’10, neither have left early for the draft. As a result, while plenty of teams had impressive 2013-2014 campaigns, few have returned the upper-class talent or tournament experience that resides in Cambridge. The ability to retain talent year-over-year and consistent winning has lifted Harvard above recent mid-major fads, according to Goodman.
“They are certainly one of the best, most consistent, true mid-majors over the last four to five years,” Goodman said. “You’ve got some other good ones right now that I think have a real chance to be good like Stephen F. Austin, Toledo, and Louisiana Tech, but those are all schools that aren’t consistent like Harvard has been.”
This consistent success has come in the face of a host of obstacles; though Harvard boasts a name that few other programs can contend with, Ivy League recruiting constraints, a stringent Academic Index, and the inability to offer athletic scholarships puts the Crimson at a marked disadvantage.
Harvard is a true mid-major in every sense of the word. Despite the traction that #2BidIvy received a year ago, the Ancient Eight is still solidly a one-bid league. Harvard has chances to impress in the nonconference schedule, but it will likely have to run the table in its biggest matchups (UMass, ASU, UVA) to even have a chance at an at-large bid.
However, none of those deterrents have stopped Amaker from building a program among the nation’s best. Since taking over seven years ago, he has brought Harvard from the bottom of the Ancient Eight’s basement into the limelight of college basketball as its top mid-major.
“Harvard is going to be good as long as Tommy Amaker is there,” Goodman said. “And right now, even if Amaker ever left, there would be people really wanting to take that Harvard job, where, when he took it, no one wanted it.”
—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at david.freed@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @CrimsonDPFreed.
—Staff writer Andrew Farber can reached at andrewfarber@college.harvard.edu.