Point Of Pressure: Untested Faces Look to Fill Chambers' Shoes

With the graduations of co-captain Steve Moundou-Missi ’15, leading scorer Wesley Saunders ’15, and key reserves Jonah Travis ’15 and Kenyatta Smith ’15, the Harvard men’s basketball team already needed inexperienced players to step into bigger roles this season.

However, the team’s biggest loss came over the summer when co-captain and starting point guard Siyani Chambers tore his ACL. Chambers, who has consistently been deemed the team’s most important player over the last three seasons by Harvard coach Tommy Amaker, was slated to be the focal point of the Crimson offense and the team’s floor general this season before the injury derailed that plan.

“Obviously, you count on losing the other guys, [but] we never counted on losing [Siyani], and I don’t think anyone did,” Amaker said. “You adjust, and it is all about that all the time—to maneuver and adjust and maximize who we are and where we are.”

The three-headed monster tasked with attempting to replicate Chambers’s production consists of an untested freshman, the team’s top three-point shooter, and a junior who has played all of 60 minutes in his college career. For Tommy McCarthy, Corbin Miller, and Matt Fraschilla, the injury to Chambers provides an opportunity to lead the starters of the five-time defending Ivy League champs.

While each member of the trio figures to see game action, Amaker has been coy about how he will divvy up minutes.

“If we had to begin today or tomorrow, we have a few guys we’ve kind of looked and changed and tinkered,” Amaker said. “We’ll get a chance to see what that’s like this weekend. I think that gives us a few more days this week to experiment, if you will, but I do think this weekend we’ll have a certain lineup. Will that lineup be the one we stay with? Who knows, but this weekend gives us a chance with an exhibition.”

For McCarthy, the injury means that his opportunity to make an impact comes earlier than expected; for Miller, it signals a potential position switch; for Fraschilla, it creates a chance to see meaningful minutes and push his teammates.

“I realize this is a huge opportunity for me to step in and fight for some minutes on the floor,” McCarthy said. “Coming in, even with Siyani here, I was hoping to make an impact freshman year, but, obviously, this kind of enhances that. It’s a huge opportunity for me.”

McCarthy, a three-year starter at La Costa Canyon High School in Carlsbad, Calif., is expected to shoulder the lion’s share of the point guard load. Amaker is no stranger to placing responsibility on his younger players, and McCarthy has had to be a leader on an upperclassman-laden team before.

“He was in a similar situation for me as a sophomore,” said David Cassaw, McCarthy’s high school coach. “He was starting with four seniors. He’s got a lot of pride and a lot of confidence in his game. I think what’s going to carry him is he’s confident, and the reason he’s confident is because he’s put a lot of time in.”

Three seasons ago, Amaker started Chambers at point guard for all 30 of the team’s games after Brandyn Curry ’14 withdrew from the college. As a freshman, Chambers averaged nearly 38 minutes a game en route to claiming Ivy League Rookie of the Year honors and quarterbacking the team to its first NCAA tournament win in program history.

“I’m not the same player [as Siyani],” McCarthy said. “There’s a lot of things that he does that I can’t do, and I think there’s some things that I can do that he didn’t bring. I think it’s a different style, but the leadership role is what’s going to be a constant.”

McCarthy started opposite Fraschilla in the team’s Crimson and Black scrimmage during Crimson Madness last month. The freshman averaged 19.6 points and 4.4 assists last season at La Costa Canyon and was rated a three-star prospect by several recruiting outlets.

“He was always playing, always working on his game, always evolving his game,” Cassaw said. “The thing I saw was his ability to become more and more confident as a ball handler. I saw him becoming more confident as a passer and more well-rounded as a player. By the time he got to his senior year, he was setting the table for us, making passes, scoring when necessary.”

While losing Chambers puts Harvard in a difficult situation, all three of the point guards competing for the starting role feel that they are ready and have improved as players due to the competition this fall.

“I got to learn a lot of things from them—just about our system, standards, work ethic—because they’re guys who have been here for a few years,” McCarthy said. “They’ve really helped bring me along as a freshman, showing me the ropes. Competing against them, they’re both great players, so it’s definitely made me step my game up and made me a lot better player.”

Miller, the most experienced of the trio, figures to be McCarthy’s backup but will see most of his minutes at shooting guard. While McCarthy is a pass-first point guard who does have the ability to attack the rim, Miller is more of a spot-up shooter. Seventy-seven percent of the junior’s points last season came off of three pointers.

Miller and freshman Corey Johnson, the team’s two best outside shooters, figure to be the floor spacers in Amaker’s inside-out offense, which will be centered around junior forward Zena Edosomwan.

“I’m not entirely sure what [my role] will be,” Miller said. “In past years, I’ve played a little bit at the point. Obviously, my strengths are shooting the ball and have been and that’s been my role in the past.”

That leaves Fraschilla. The Dallas native is the the team’s only true point guard who has played in a college game. While the junior figures to receive more meaningful minutes than he has in the past two seasons, Fraschilla has embraced the role of mentor to McCarthy and knows that how he practices will make everyone around him better.

“[The three of us] have really been pushing each other in practice, and you can’t underestimate the value of what it’s like going against each other everyday,” Fraschilla said. “We’re not taking it easy on each other. We’re going to have some games this year that are going to be absolute dogfights, so we have to be 110 percent on each other everyday.”

While whoever starts on Saturday in an exhibition against McGill and in next Friday’s regular season opener against MIT will not match Chambers’s experience and talent, Amaker insists that McCarthy, Miller, and Fraschilla just need to be themselves.

“Our philosophy hasn’t changed a heck of a lot,” Amaker said. “We’re not going to change our principles or our philosophy, but we may have to tinker and adjust some things or change a tactic or two...and that’s ok, we’ve done it in the past. We’ve tinkered and changed but we didn’t change the foundation or the philosophy of our system, which we believe heavily in and our players believe in as well.”

—Staff writer Stephen J. Gleason can be reached at stephengleason@thecrimson.com.