The Harvard basketball team tonight concludes a season that everyone would like to forget as soon as possible. The quintet meets Dartmouth in the IAB at 8 p.m.

Gene Dressler, captain and only senior on the squad, seemed disappointed and somewhat surprised with the poor showing. After his final IAB practice yesterday, he said that the Crimson had better talent than half the teams in the Ivy League. Only Princeton and Cornell. Dressler believes, are better than Harvard on paper. And Yale, he added, is just about as good.

Why, then, has Harvard had such a disastrous year? Dressler isn't sure, but he thinks one important factor is the strength of the League. "I'm not impressed by the mystique of West Coast ball," the captain shrugged. Although he is not comparing Harvard to UCLA, he thinks the Ivies are as good as the Big Ten.

Not Well-Drilled

Dressler would not go into much detail about the confidence of the ball players and team morale. But it is obvious to the faithful fan that this Crimson five did not work well together and was not as well-drilled as its Ivy foes.

It is hard to gauge, however, how much this is a cause of the bad year and how much it is an effect.

Dressler at least partly blames himself for the lack of team success. "I prefer to be the playmaker and sparkplug than the scorer," he said, "but sometimes this year I think I was too unselfis.h."

The Crimson captain had some trouble with a dislocated finger for a while this season, and his shooting was off for a half-dozen games. Although he doesn't complain about it, he has spent more time on the bench this year than ever before. It certainly has not been the happiest year of Gene Dressler's basketball life.