Lin-sanity another help for improving Harvard

REGENSBURG (David Hein’s Eye on the Future) – The worldwide hunger crisis is over! Lin-sane! All of the world’s leaders have called for world peace! Lin-sane! The Chicago Cubs will win the World Series!

Well, let’s not get too crazy in thanking the Lin-sanity surrounding New York Knicks sensation Jeremy Lin for everything well and good. But the meteoric rise of Lin will very likely have a strong impact on one institution – his former college, Harvard University .

Lin left a huge mark on Harvard, helping make it into a winning program, turning the Crimson from a 12-16 and 8-22 team in his freshman and sophomore seasons respectively to a 21-8 record in his senior campaign in 2009-10.

Another huge impact was the arrival of Tommy Amaker in 2007 as head coach after previous stops as point guard and assistant coach for Mike Krzyzewski at Duke and then as head coach at Seton Hall and Michigan.

But there are two major hurdles for Harvard in trying to draw top talent out East.

One is the elite admittance standards within the prestigious Ivy League, which includes Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale.

The other is that Ivy League universities do not offer athletic scholarships, meaning the student-athletes have to pay to attend college and play basketball.

That makes it a lot tougher for Amaker and other Ivy League coaches to bring in any big names. Not that the situation is new. The Ivy League hasn’t been known for producing much NBA talent.

Two of the biggest names from the Ivy League were Hall of Famer Bill Bradley and current Sacramento Kings personnel boss Geoff Petrie both from Princeton. There were also players such as as Jim McMillian (Columbia) of the Los Angeles Lakers, journeyman Chris Dudley (Yale), Steve Goodrich (Princeton), Matt Maloney (Pennsylvania), 1973 ABA Rookie of the Year Brian Taylor (Princeton) and 1977 NBA champion Corky Calhoun (Pennsylvania).

The last Harvard NBA player before Lin was Ed Smith, who played just 11 games with the Knicks in 1953-54.

Still, Amaker’s reputation – and his connections to Duke and other big schools – has helped Harvard acquire bigger talent and the team become more successful.

Lin’s last season at Harvard was the Crimson’s first in which they won at least 20 games. And now the Ivy League school has collected three 20-win seasons in the 101 years of hoops there. And Amaker is convincing higher level talent to come to Cambridge.

The 2011-12 group of Harvard freshmen includes center Kenyatta Smith from Sun Valley, California, and swingman Wesley Saunders from Los Angeles. It's impressive that the Ivy League school could grab two talented big men away from big name West Coast universities.

Amaker also brought in forward Steve Moundou-Missi, whose father Jean-Paul and mother Annette both played for the Cameroon national basketball teams in the 1980s.

For 2012-13, Amaker has already gotten commitments from forward Mike Hall of Atlanta, point guard Siyani Chambers from Golden Valley, Minnesota and Canadian power forward Agunwa Okolie. And North Hollywood, California power forward Zena Edosomwan – considered a Top 100 recruit by ESPN and one of the premier big men on the West Coast – is still considering Harvard for next fall.

Amaker continues to reach even higher looking forward to the 2013-14 season as he tried to get ESPN Top 60 talent Brannen Greene, who instead chose Kansas. Shooting guard Davon Reed from Princeton, New Jersey, currently ranked 43rd in the US, however is still considering Harvard as are top-level guys such as Austin Colbert (Lakeville, Connecticut), Stephen Domingo (San Francisco) and Nigel Williams-Goss (Happy Valley, Oregon).

The improved level of talent flowing into Cambridge and Amaker’s coaching has turned Harvard into a winning program. Harvard started the season 8-0 and the basketball world noticed, ranking the Crimson in the Top 25 for the first time in school history, the week of December 5 2011. The Associated Press had Harvard at No 25 and the ESPN/USA Today poll gave the Crimson the number 24 slot.

Harvard became the first Ivy League school to be ranked since Princeton made the top 10 late in the 1997-98 season (with Goodrich). The only other Ivy League school to be ranked since 1970 was Pennsylvania, which was last in the poll in January 1995. Brown is now the only Ivy League institution to never make the poll.

At 23-3 overall this season, the Crimson lead the Ivy League with a 9-1 record with just four games left. The Ivy League is the only Division I conference that does not hold an annual conference tournament for a berth in the NCAA Tournament, meaning the Ivy League winner goes to the March Madness. So, if they can hold off second-placed Pennsylvania (7-2), Harvard would reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1946.

That exposure in March will obviously help Amaker’s chances of drawing top level but even more important will be Lin’s continued success in the NBA.

“It really does help recruiting. Those same kids that don’t think that they can reach the NBA from Harvard, that they need to go to big-time schools, now might take another look,” Milton Academy high school coach Lamar Reddicks, who helped recruit Lin to Harvard, was quoted in an AP report.

Harvard making the NCAA Tournament? Lin-sane! Harvard winning the NCAA Tournament? That would be unbelievable – not Lin-sane.

David Hein

FIBA

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