Harvard Basketball Poised for Greatness

The Chinese surname “Lin” means “forest” or “woods” in English.

It’s appropriate in that, coming out of the Jeremy Lin era, a young 2010-11 Harvard men’s basketball team has the ability to finally escape from the woods of Ivy basketball irrelevance and begin a golden age of success the program has never achieved.

The team took baby steps last year, when it won its most-ever games and advanced to its first postseason tournament since the Truman presidency. Of course, the team then lost Lin, whose story could have been a fairy-tale written by the Brothers Grimm.

After getting just one summer league offer, the former Crimson guard outplayed John Wall, No. 1 pick of the 2010 NBA Draft, in his final summer contest, beginning a tsunami of momentum. In the end, the Bay Area product was able to turn down an offer from the World Champion Lakers to sign with his hometown Warriors, and, after stealing the ball from Kobe Bryant in his first pro game, the rest is history.

Winning a first-ever Ivy title will be a tall task for Lin’s former Harvard teammates in a conference featuring talented Princeton and Penn squads, but the talent is certainly there to do it.

That starts with Kyle Casey, the reigning Ivy League Rookie of the Year who only got better as the 2009-10 season went along. The forward, picked to every major preseason All-Ivy team, will miss the early part of the non-conference schedule with a broken foot but should be ready to go by Ivy play.

Junior co-captain Keith Wright will start at center and could be the most improved player on this year’s squad. At the Harvard open practice two weekends ago, Wright looked to have developed a fluid midrange jumper that could be a major weapon on pick-and-rolls.

Casey’s injury makes it extremely important that Wright stay healthy this year because the frontcourt already lacks depth after losing Doug Miller ’10 and Pat Magnarelli ’10 to graduation. Wright, who experienced inflammation in his Achilles tendon last season, was never 100 percent during conference play—an injury that really hurt the Crimson in home games against Cornell and Princeton.

Junior Andrew Van Nest will likely start alongside Wright until Casey returns, but Van Nest often struggled with his interior defense against stronger big men like Cornell center Jeff Foote last season, and he prefers to spot up as a three-point shooter rather then go inside offensively.

At the wings, sophomore Christian Webster looks to build on a phenomenal CIT tournament game and blossom into a go-to scorer for Harvard. Freshman Laurent Rivard will likely do a lot of what Webster did last year for the team and may already be the best pure shooter on the squad.

In the backcourt, coach Tommy Amaker will likely start two point guards in junior co-captain Oliver McNally and sophomore Brandyn Curry, both of whom proved to be dangerous threats from three-point land last year and statistically played their best when they were on the court together.

The talent is certainly there for a title run, but no matter what happens this year, it’s an exciting time to be a fan of Crimson basketball. Last year’s Big Red showed what a group of talented players can do with great chemistry stemming from four years of playing together. Yet nobody could have predicted entering a wide-open 2007-08 Ivy field–much like the current season’s–what Ryan Wittman, Foote, and Lou Dale would have accomplished three years later.

Casey, Webster, and Curry are currently in a similar situation and will only continue to get better–maybe forming their own Big Three down the line–while Amaker is recruiting talent on a level no other Ivy coach is close to approaching.

Though nationally elite targets Andre Hollins and Spencer Dinwiddie ended up choosing BCS schools, Harvard should be proud of finishing runner-up in both situations and for consistently being in the conversation among top talent. Getting the Crimson’s name out there will only lead to good things down the road, as Amaker is slowly starting to make playing in Cambridge the cool thing to do among some of the country’s best prospects.

Of course, with six new freshmen already on tap for 2011-12, the team will likely need to make some hard cuts in the future. Regardless of this looming roster inflation, if Amaker remains at Harvard and the talent disparity between the Crimson and the rest of the Ancient Eight continues to grow, it’s easy to see the team dominating the conference in future years.

Penn and Princeton had controlled the Ivy basketball scene for the previous four decades until the Big Red came along and shook things up. But with a Big Three departed, its time for a new one to emerge, and its exciting to think a new dynasty could begin Saturday at George Mason. So after 110 years of waiting, let the Harvard golden age finally begin.

—Staff writer Scott A. Sherman can be reached at ssherman13@college.harvard.edu.