Harvard Hardwood, the Harvard Magazine basketball report
One day in the early 1980s, Harvard men’s basketball coach Frank McLaughlin got off the phone with legendary University of North Carolina coach Dean Smith, and could not have been more excited. Smith, who had recruited McLaughlin in high school and with whom McLaughlin had remained friendly, had pledged to bring the Tar Heels, one of the best college teams, to Harvard’s home court as part of a home-and-home series with the Crimson. The commitment, McLaughlin recalled in a phone interview on Thursday, was a major “coup” for Harvard.
Unfortunately, the matchup never materialized. The reason? Then Harvard athletic director Jack Reardon refused to approve the matchup. As McLaughlin told Bob Ryan of The Boston Globe in 2006, Reardon was afraid the Crimson would be “humiliated.”
After the Crimson learned last Sunday that they would be facing North Carolina in the opening round of the NCAA tournament, this year’s team had no choice but to play the heavily favored, fourth-seeded Tar Heels. But in its Thursday night matchup in Jacksonville, the thirteenth-seeded Crimson was hardly “humiliated.” Buoyed by 26 points from Wesley Saunders ’15, Harvard overcame a 16-point second-half deficit to take a 65-63 lead with just over one minute remaining. The Tar Heels scored the next four points to take a 67-65 lead before Saunders held the ball at the top of the key and missed a possible game-winning three-pointer with time expiring. Final score: UNC 67, Harvard 65.
Harvard’s near upset of the perennially powerful Tar Heels reinforced the message that the Crimson has become a legitimate national player under Tommy Amaker, the Stemberg Family head coach of men’s basketball.
But with the forthcoming graduation of Saunders and six other seniors, can Amaker—and the dynamo point guard Siyani Chambers ’16—can keep them there?
The Build-Up
After the NCAA tournament bracket was revealed last Sunday, most fans and analysts gave the Crimson little to no chance of winning. As David Freed of The Harvard Crimson reported earlier this week, FiveThiryEight, ESPN’s sports-analytics site, gave the Crimson just a 13 percent chance of advancing. As Freed also reported, nearly 90 percent of participants in ESPN’s bracket challenge predicted a Tar Heels victory. This included Law School alumnus President Barack Obama, J.D. ’91,who had picked Harvard to pull off a first-round upset last year, but foresaw no such magic this year.
Yet McLaughlin, the former Harvard coach, thought the Crimson had a chance— primarily because of Amaker and his history with Carolina. The Tar Heels had been his archrival when he played for and was assistant coach at Duke, It stood to reason, McLaughlin argued, that Harvard’s coach would have his players impeccably prepared. “I can imagine the average fan saying, ‘Oh my God, we’re playing North Carolina,’” McLaughlin said. “But to me…there’s an advantage…[because] there’s no question that Tommy Amaker knows what it is to beat a North Carolina.”
The Game
As the game began, the Crimson’s performance lay somewhere between popular sentiment and McLaughlin’s assessment: Harvard was holding its own, but the Tar Heels dominated on the glass and took an 11-point halftime lead. But it was because of Saunders, not Amaker, that the Crimson remained within striking distance. The senior swingman scored Harvard’s first 10 points and 15 of the team’s 25 points before intermission. He also dished out three assists, making him directly responsible for nearly all of Harvard’s first-half points. Nonetheless, as has been all the case all year, it seemed unlikely that Saunders could singlehandedly carry the Crimson. The Tar Heels appeared ready to blow the game open when they took a 16-point lead less than five minutes into the second half.
Then the entire Crimson offense came alive. Saunders continued to lead the way, scoring on an array of jumpers and drives, but for one of the few times this year he received help. Kenyatta Smith ’15 had a tip-in to cut the lead to cut the lead to seven; Corbin Miller ’15 (’17) hit a pair of free throws to trim the deficit to three; and with just over a minute remaining, Siyani Chambers hit a three-pointer and sank a free throw to give Harvard the lead. In the most important stretch of the season, Harvard’s offense was as balanced, crisp, and dynamic as it had been all year.
Only it wasn’t quite enough. With under 10 seconds remaining, Saunders received the ball from Chambers on a dribble hand-off (a play where one player literally hands the ball, instead of throwing it, to his teammate), just as he had in late-game situations against Holy Cross, Brown, and Yale earlier this year. In a wrinkle, Saunders was not looking to shoot. Instead, as he explained in the post-game press conference, he wanted to get the ball to Miller, the Crimson’s sharpshooter; but with Miller covered, he launched a three-pointer instead. It clanged off the backboard and rim.
The Crimson had finished one shot away from the biggest win in program history, leaving Williams, the Tar Heels coach, to say he felt like he had “won the lottery.”
The Future
To cash in again, Amaker’s squad will have to replace the output and leadership of one of the most successful and talented senior classes in program history. The class of 2015 won 95 games, four Ivy League championships, and multiple NCAA tournament games. The group also features some of the most talented players in Harvard history, including Steve Moundou-Missi, the first Crimson player to be named Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year, and Saunders, who graduates as Harvard’s fourth-leading scorer and may very well join Jeremy Lin ’10 as the next Crimson hoopster to play in the NBA.
Whether the Crimson can sustain and build on this group’s success will depend largely on Chambers and Amaker. The junior point guard struggled with shooting and turnovers for much of the year, but notched 13 points against North Carolina—and, as Amaker has repeatedly said, remains the team’s “most important” player. For his part, Amaker will not only have to ensure that next year’s team melds, just as this year’s squad did, but also continue to attract top-tier talent to Cambridge—a not insignificant challenge given that the rest of the league is growing stronger.
Yet for all the questions about the Crimson’s future, and even amid the disappointment of Thursday night’s near miss, it is worth appreciating how far this program has come—and how far Amaker has taken it. Just a generation ago, Harvard’s athletic director literally refused to play North Carolina in the friendly (and minuscule) confines of Harvard’s home court in a virtually meaningless regular season game. Last night, the Crimson nearly knocked them off the sport’s biggest stage.
As McLaughlin said on Thursday, “Who ever dreamt that Harvard would become a basketball school?”
Watch for David Tannenwald’s recap of the season, and look ahead, in the May-June Harvard Magazine, online in mid April and in print by the end of the month.
