Word: harrison
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Harrison had high hopes for "the great Harvard basketball experiment," as the Crimson's big-time aspirations were dubbed when Harrison first came to Cambridge. But despite the talent (high school All-Americans James Brown, Floyd Lewis, Tony Jenkins and Jim Fitzsimmons), Harrison never was able to communicate his "dream" to his players...
From the beginning there had been the feeling that Harrison wasn't really the man to be Harvard basketball coach. Somehow, he always seemed out of place in the Cambridge arena. His volatile outbursts on and off the court, his relentless quest for ballplayers "who will run through walls for you," his often suspect offensive and defensive strategies, left most people uneasy. Not because his goals were incompatible with the Harvard atmosphere, but because Harrison never seemed quite the man capable of pulling them...
...longer Harrison stayed at Harvard the larger the communications gulf between the coach and his players grew. And this failure to relate was what ultimately undid him. Harrison never really adjusted to the Cambridge atmosphere and always seemed to regard the Harvard student as a somewhat less than normal human being. And if his strategic deficiencies restricted his success as a coach, his failure to communicate even deficient strategies handcuffed him all the more...
Harvard's failure this season can be attributed in the main to incompetence in basketball's three Ds--defense, discipline and determination. The 1973 Crimson cagers simply didn't play the kind of defense that makes champions. The man-to-man under Harrison's guidance was shoddy at best, and the Crimson coach seemed unwilling or incapable of installing effective zone coverage. As for discipline, Crimson fans saw very little of that, as Harvard's helter-skelter fast-break offense ran wild week after week, producing a phenomenal number of turnovers (as many as 38 in a single ballgame...
...Harrison's ineptness with the first two Ds, combined with his inability to communicate with his players, undermined the third: determination. Harrison wanted players who would "run through walls" for him. But as the season progressed it became increasingly evident that not only were the Harvard players unwilling to run through walls for the Crimson coach, but they had lost the drive to execute even the most basic aspects of the game...