Is The Crimson Starting A Dynasty?

The Harvard men’s basketball team’s record-breaking 2011-12 season was brought to an official end this week with the squad’s annual banquet at the Harvard Club of Boston. The event marked a wrap-up of the past year—its best moments exemplified in a ten-plus minute highlight video—as well as the official start of next season.

That meant it was time for me, too, to share my final thoughts on 2011-12, and look ahead to 2012-13 as well.

First, there’s this season, as the scores of missed opportunities during Harvard’s first NCAA Tournament appearance in 66 years still raise questions of what could have been.

For example, what if Laurent Rivard, who was on fire all game, had played more than six minutes in the first half?

What if Tommy Amaker hadn’t decided to go small after Kyle Casey picked up his second foul? (At that point, with the score tied at 20, Amaker’s frontcourt consisted of Keith Wright and four guards against a Vandy lineup that contained the 6’11 Festus Ezeli and the 6’7 Jeffrey Taylor. Those two proceeded to collect back-to-back offensive rebounds on the next Comodores possession, Vandy exploded on a 13-3 run before the break, and from there it was a totally different game).

What if the refs hadn’t blown the call on the Oliver McNally “turnover” that he actually threw off a Vanderbilt player with a minute to go?

What if Harvard didn’t make dozens of silly mistakes, like Corbin Miller dribbling the ball off his leg—leading to an easy Jenkins dunk—towards the end of the first half and Casey missing a slam at the beginning of the second?

What if the Crimson had beaten Penn at home in the first place—would it have gotten a higher seed and avoided a “second” round matchup with an uber-talented Commodores squad that was basically the worst possible matchup for it?

Would things have turned out differently? Who knows. But Harvard showed a lot of fight and did itself proud against a Vanderbilt team that will always be the only squad to beat Kentucky on a non-buzzer beater this year.

And so now, it’s time to move on and turn our attention to next season, for Crimson Madness 2012 is only 153 days away.

At the banquet, Amaker mentioned that his overarching goal was to form a men’s basketball dynasty in Cambridge. And his commitment to Harvard has never seemed greater than it has this month, when he turned down the chance to interview for the South Carolina and LSU jobs.

Before getting into that whole dynasty thing, let’s take it one step at a time, and focus on next year: Can Harvard do what the great Penn and Princeton teams routinely did in the 1970s-90s, or what Cornell did from 2008-10, and pull off a three-peat?

Unlike my fellow beat-writer Martin Kessler, I say yes, with the caveat that winning the 2012-13 title will be a far greater challenge than it was this season (and even then, it was hard). The Crimson is losing a lot, starting with its co-captains, Wright and McNally, as well as freshman Corbin Miller, who will take two years off for his LDS mission.

Harvard will miss Wright’s rebounding, production in the paint, and ability to block shots; it will miss McNally’s leadership, heart, and free-throw shooting (the latter of which bailed out the Crimson down the stretch numerous times this past year); and it will miss Miller’s three-point prowess that could change the dynamic of a game at any second.

The team now has gaping holes at the five and the two. At center, Harvard has a ton of guys who could potentially get minutes—sophomore Ugo Okam, freshmen Steve Moundou-Missi, Kenyatta Smith, and Jonah Travis, and incoming freshmen Agunwa Okolie, Mike Hall, and Evan Cummins. Amaker won’t be able to run the offense through anyone in that group, as he did with Wright, but he should nonetheless be able to find one capable starting center.

Ideally, that player would be either Smith, the highly-touted prospect who couldn’t get off the bench this year, or Okam, the seven-footer who has shown flashes of being a defensive game-changer but presently has little offensive polish. But if Okam can learn a post-move or two, his size gives him the possibility of being a dominant Ivy starting center, while Smith is talented enough to be the same. If either steps up and claims the starting job, that would allow Moundou-Missi and Travis to remain high-energy guys off the bench, roles in which they are better suited. Lastly, don’t rule out Okolie, who could step right in and be a significant contributor as a rookie next season.

At shooting guard, I’m sure the coach would love to give junior Christian Webster back his starting job if Webster can revert to his sophomore-year form. But Amaker has also spoken very highly of freshman Wesley Saunders, who won this year’s “most improved player” award at the banquet and who played more and more minutes as the season went on. Saunders is probably already a more talented player offensively than McNally, and if he can improve his shot he has the potential to be a major factor next season. Either way, without Miller, the team is going to badly lack guard depth, with sophomore Matt Brown and incoming freshman Siyani Chambers likely being asked to play big minutes off the bench.

As I’ve written multiple times, my biggest problem with the 2011-12 team was its lack of a go-to scorer, and that’s where I think the losses of Wright and McNally may in a way actually help the team. The offense was a bit too balanced at times this season, especially down the stretch when everyone was hesitant to take the big shot. The losses of two starters should allow Casey to blossom much the way Ian Hummer did this past season for Princeton, when Hummer was asked to play a bigger role in the previously super-balanced Tiger offense following the departures of Kareem Maddox and Dan Mavraides. Casey, who will serve as a 2012-13 co-captain along with Brandyn Curry, has the ability to be the best player in the league, and will likely need to make the leap in his senior season from an 11-and-5 guy to something more like 18-and-9 guy in order to offset the loss of Wright.

Laurent Rivard’s numbers should improve as well, and if he can shoot anywhere near as well as he did against the Commodores on a regular basis, he could be in for a Ryan Wittman-esque junior season. But if Rivard doesn’t become more consistent, the team is badly going to lack a second shooter next season when he goes cold, as the Canadian often did this year. Without Miller, unless Webster returns to form, Harvard could struggle as a team from long range—never a good thing in the Ancient Eight.

Curry, while providing always-necessary veteran leadership at the point, may be asked to play a larger scoring role than he has in the past as well. If Curry can join his fellow returnees in increasing his offensive production to offset the team’s losses, it would greatly ease the burden on whoever replaces Wright and McNally, allowing the two new starters to merely need to provide more of a defensive presence.

Thus, if Casey and Rivard emerge as legitimate number one and two options, respectively, then I still see Harvard as having a great shot at a third conference title—especially if Saunders can find his shot and a starting center emerges who can play good defense and hold his own offensively.

Sure, the Crimson has question marks, but so does everyone else. Around the league, Penn, Yale, and Princeton all lose key pieces (Zack Rosen, Greg Mangano, and Doug Davis, respectively). The Quakers and, to a lesser extent, the Bulldogs, were essentially one-man teams who will need to rebuild without their stars.

But the conference as a whole could be deeper than ever next year. I expect big improvements out of Brown, which will have a new coach and regains star Tucker Halpern (who missed this season with mono) and talented freshman Rafael Maia (deemed ineligible this season by the NCAA). The Bears will possess arguably the most talented starting five in the league next season when those two join Sean McGonagill, Stephen Albrecht, and Andrew McCarthy, all of whom have the potential to be All-Ivy honorees. But as good as Halpern is, are he and what will be essentially a talented freshman center enough to improve a 2-12 team into a conference contender? Probably not.

Columbia should, on paper, also greatly benefit from the return of its star, redshirt senior Noruwa Agho, who lead the league in scoring two years ago. But as I’ve written in the past, the Lions were a team that had a lot of Ewing Theory in them this season, and if they weren’t good with Agho in the past, it’s tough to say they’ll be a contender with him next year, even taking into account vast improvements of Brian Barbour and Mark Cisco.

Cornell should be another improved team, and it will feature a talented pair of athletic forwards in Errick Peck and reigning Rookie of the Year Shonn Miller. But the return of Peck—who missed much of the season with a knee injury—is more than canceled out by the losses of Chris Wroblewski and Andrew Ferry. Barring major improvements from Miller and this year’s breakout guard, Johnathan Gray, it’s unlikely the Big Red will have enough to compete for a title next season.

That leaves Princeton (no, Dartmouth, you don’t get a paragraph), which has Hummer and a lot of question marks. T.J. Bray, Mack Darrow, Brendan Connolly, and Denton Koon all played 32 games and averaged five to seven points this year, so conceivably any of them could break out and become a good second option alongside Hummer. But right now, the Tigers to me look like a team that could be a lot like this year’s Bulldogs squad, with one great low-post presence but a lot of mediocre secondary options.

On the whole, it’s unlikely there will be any dominant team in the league next season. But the Crimson’s trio of Casey, Rivard, and Curry is as good as anyone else’s top three—maybe outside Columbia, who, unlike Harvard, has little other talent—and though we’ll have to wait until the fall to see what next season will bring, a three-peat is a definite possibility, despite what you may read in Kesslemania.

Oh, and as for that dynasty thing? We’ll let Zena Edosomwan and the other Top-100 recruits he plans to bring with him to Cambridge decide that.

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