If You Picked Harvard You're Wicked Smart

 

 

Seeing a team you picked for the Final Four lose on the first day of the NCAA Tournament is never fun but at least I got the satisfaction of knowing I was correct in predicting Harvard as a potential sleeper.

 

Tommy Amaker has done an amazing job in transforming the Crimson into a power in the Ivy League, a conference long dominated by Princeton and Pennsylvania.  Harvard claimed a share of the Ivy League title in 2011 but lost a one-game playoff that cost them a trip to the NCAA's and then won the league outright the last two years.  Their appearance in last year's NCAA Tournament was the first for the program since 1946.

 

 

 



Defeating New Mexico, one of the best teams in the nation this year, not only earned the Crimson their first ever win in the Tournament but it also cemented Amaker's status as one of the nation's best coaches.  He landed at Harvard after stints at Seton Hall and Michigan and quickly turned around a program that usually finished in the bottom half of the Ivy.

I was lucky enough a few years ago to attend a clinic put on by Amaker at Harvard.  For two hours his assistant coaches ran a full practice while Amaker explained the reasoning behind every drill the team was doing.  In my experiences as a coach attending these clinics, I judge the speaker based on how simple he or she can explain their plan in a short period of time.  My reasoning is that if I can come away from a clinic understanding what Amaker wants from his team or what Vivian Stringer wants from her team, I believe they can get their teams to understand and master the system given that they spend several hours a day over several months learning and executing the sam system.

This Harvard team was expected to be excellent but a preseason crisis erupted when co-captains Brandyn Curry and Kyle Casey withdrew from school due to their taking part in a cheating scandal. 

Amaker and his team just moved on and repeated as Ivy League champions despite those losses and now they have earned the respect of the nation.  Their opponent in the next round, Arizona, will be favored to end this Cinderella run but don't count out Amaker or his team tomorrow.  They showed the country last night how good they are and with a win over Arizona, they would roll into the Sweet 16.

I, for one, won't make the mistake of underestimating them again.