A Season of Progress
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Frank Sullivan summed it up on more than one occasion.
“These guys have come a long way in 12 months,” the Harvard head coach said of his team.
Last year wasn’t one for the books at the famed Ivy League school. With four starters gone from the 2002-03 team – starters who played the vast majority of minutes for the team – the Crimson didn’t figure to be contenders. But few could have predicted that they would lose their first 11 games of the season en route to a 4-23 finish. It got to the point where Sullivan, who is as well-respected as any coach in the league among his peers, talked about winning ten-minute stretches or halves of games, in the name of taking baby steps.
“We all try to put a happy face on what they went through last year – they went through a lot last year, and there’s still some scarred tissue in their heads and their bodies and their minds about how they played,” Sullivan reflected.
It wasn’t a season to remember, but at the same time, the players knew that it was a rebuilding year. Most of the veterans were relatively inexperienced, and the team had no seniors. The only player who had ever started a game was junior captain Jason Norman, who had started nine games the previous season. That meant that this team had a real learning curve and a lot of work to do.
With all the work they put in – and players universally acknowledge that the team never stopped working last year – it was tough not seeing results at the end of games. But there were good developments for the future. Kevin Rogus led the team in scoring and showed that he could shoot the ball consistently as a starter after doing it off the bench. Matt Stehle had five double-doubles and showed that he will be a force to be reckoned with. Norman remained one of the league’s top defenders, while Michael Beal and Dave Giovacchini gained more experience at the point.
After sweeping this weekend’s final home games of the season with wins over Yale (82-66) and Brown (80-68), the Crimson are in a three-way tie for second place in the Ivy League and on track for at least a .500 finish in league play. They were eliminated from contention on Friday night, but there’s plenty to be satisfied about with this season for the players and coaches. They can see that all the work has paid off, that they paid their dues last season and now the results are coming.
Saturday night was senior night, honoring seniors Norman, Rogus, Giovacchini and Graham Beatty. Beatty’s mother sang the national anthem, a wonderful rendition that got a rousing ovation from the crowd and that included those of us seated on press row. Then the Crimson went out and beat the Bears, holding off every little charge they made in the second half to try to get a little closer. After the game, there was a lot of reflection on what has happened with this team.
“They are the guts of the program,” Sullivan said of his seniors. “These guys came into the program and sat, sat a second year, got to play their third year and it was a disaster for them. It just means so much to watch them grow, watch them achieve, and watch them walk out of here tonight with their heads up.”
“We knew we were going to do it all season long,” said Rogus, who scored 11 points against Brown and hit clutch three-pointers all weekend long. “We knew that last season was a rebuilding year, and we took what we learned from that year and built upon it this year throughout the whole time. Now that the season’s ending, we’re in our best shape and playing our best basketball.”
Far from last season’s struggles, the Crimson will finish this season without once losing more than three games in a row, and have won consecutive games on four occasions, including this weekend. Last season, the Crimson lost 11 games by ten points or less; this season, they have a 6-8 record in those games. They started winning games that they probably would have lost last year, showing the new maturity. It’s easy for the losses to add up and take a real toll, but the players just kept playing and were ready to come into this year.
“I saw them go through so much last year,” said sophomore center Brian Cusworth, who is playing arguably his best basketball of the season right now. “Their overall win-loss column did not show in the slightest how hard they worked and how much they went through as a team. I saw in their faces after every one of those games and especially coming into this year that they had the determination to not let that happen again, because it’s so heartbreaking. These seniors have definitely set out to go out on a high note.”
“We just had to overcome adversity,” said Norman, the team’s first two-year captain since Ron Mitchell in the 1990-91 and 1991-92 seasons. “We had a tough year, we were 4-23. It feels great to turn this season around like that.”
The Ivy League isn’t loaded with future NBA stars. It’s a league that’s known more for its academics than athletics, though it hasn’t been without athletic accomplishments over the years. Teams are known more for their patient offensive sets instead of the run-and-gun that make the highlight reels. By and large, coaching jobs are not stepping stones to major conferences, but are destinations instead. In the ranks of Division I, the Ivy League is unique.
“You really do work with your players in an old-school kind of way,” Sullivan said. “They come in the back door, they have practice, they leave, and we don’t bug them for the rest of their day. I think that’s the beauty of the Ivy League, and specifically Harvard – the players are responsible once they leave here, for the most part. You just really work on coaching.”
The seniors have gone out on that high note at home, and next weekend they’ll try to do that on the road. With wins over traditional powers Princeton and Penn, the Crimson would finish off their first winning season in three years. The Crimson knocked off Princeton earlier in the season, and with the way they played this weekend, there is certainly reason to believe that they can certainly head down I-95 and pick up two more wins.
“I think our guys would play anyone in a parking lot tomorrow to get this thing to .500 or above,” said Sullivan.
“There’s so much motivation to go down there,” said Rogus. “First of all, it’s Penn and Princeton, which is just huge. We haven’t won down there in our careers, I think. To get Princeton and Penn is a big deal, to get .500 is a big deal, to get second place in the Ivy League, it’s our last games – there’s so much motivation, it’s unbelievable just for a weekend. So we’re going to go out there and have a pretty good weekend.”
That would cap off a season that would leave Sullivan quite happy.
“It means a lot,” said Sullivan of finishing with a winning record. “I think they’ve taken the charge of getting the energy back in the program quite seriously. I think they went through great adversity last year, and we hear that adversity generates strength – I think it clearly did with this group of players. We had talked to them significantly during the course of the season about getting our program back to the level it was when they came in, and I think it’s pretty close to being there right now.”
Big Man Comes Back Strong
Although certainly not the primary reason for the Crimson’s struggles, one thing that didn’t help matters was an injury that sidelined Cusworth. He suffered a stress fracture in his right foot that kept him out for the entire season, and after the first semester he withdrew and returned home to St. Louis.
As a freshman two years ago, Cusworth played the most minutes of any reserve and showed plenty of promise while playing behind then-senior Brian Sigafoos. Here was a seven-footer who could run the floor, knock down a mid-range jump shot, and showed some ball-handling and passing ability that most seven-footers don’t have. It all came naturally to him, as he wasn’t always this tall; he was 6′ tall when he entered the ninth grade and just kept growing. He reached about 6’11” by the end of his high school years, and all the while, he wasn’t gaining a great deal of weight at first.
Last year, Cusworth figured to start reaching some of the potential he showed as a freshman, as he projected to be the starting center and a go-to guy for the team. He had worked hard to get stronger, feeling that it was his primary necessity to get better. Clearly, he would break out and become one of the Ivy League’s better players. Then the stress fracture came.
“It really makes you appreciate the game, it makes you realize how much you miss it sitting out any game,” Cusworth said of having to miss the season.
He started working out again around March, and he could feel the rust when he first got back out there and Sullivan saw it when practice started. He played in a summer pro-am league in his home of St. Louis and also attended the Pete Newell Big Man Camp, both of which helped him get ready for this season. While he enjoyed the Big Man Camp and got a lot out of it, there was some material there that wasn’t quite new to him.
“My dad is a doctor, but if you saw the literature that we have in our living room for basketball, you would think he is a coach, retired coach, training to be a coach – he has every magazine, every book, every video you can imagine,” Cusworth said. “First, about ball-handling when I was an undersized high school player, and about the post, I think we have two or three of even those videos they gave me at the camp, so now we have duplicates of it.”
There’s no question that it’s all paying off, and he has come back with the vengeance he had hoped to. He is in the top ten in the Ivy League in scoring, field goal percentage, rebounding and blocked shots, leading the league in the latter two categories, and has had seven double-doubles this season. With 65 career blocked shots through Saturday night, he is well on his way to one day breaking the school record for career blocked shots (117, held by Bill Mohler). His efforts this season include a 20-point, 13-rebound effort in a win over Northeastern and Friday night’s 21-point, 11-rebound effort against Yale. He’s had something to do with this team’s resurgence, but he has also been rejuvenated by his teammates as well.
“I can’t say enough how great it is to be back and how much of a pleasure it is to be playing with these guys that fought through so much adversity last year and see our team come together and play so well and have such a great rebound from last season,” he reflected.
