Ivy Basketball Much Improved

When the locals laughed at Harvard's presence in the Greensboro Basketball Classic, it was nothing new. Ivy League basketball, and the Crimson in particular, have long been a source of amusement in any town that knows what real basketball is all about.

They were laughing in Hawaii, too, where a Yale squad that will have trouble making the League's first division was thrown in against the likes of San Francisco, LSU and St. John's.

And they were laughing in Los Angeles, where Princeton was taking on UCLA, and at the Quaker Tournament, where Cornell was tackling Villanova.

This week, almost no one is laughing. Quite a few squads that had considered the Ivies easy pickings went home empty-handed over the holidays.

Perhaps the most shocking result came at Hawaii. Yale had been unimpressive in December struggling to beat Brown, losing to Connecticut. But the Bulldogs dumped Hawaii in the opening round, then beat USF by eight points in the semifinals. And in the finals, matched against an LSU squad that had taken St. John's the night before on a-53-point periormance by Pete Maravich, Yale won again, 97-94. Maravich, who had led the nation in scoring average with 49.0 at Christmas, was held to 34 points.

UCLA Edged Princeton

At Los Angeles it was the same story, Princeton who will have to struggle for second in a league that it won undefeated last year, eliminated Indiana 82-76 in the Bruin Classic. Then, in the finals, the Tigers played UCLA even and lost 76-75 on a basket with three seconds remaining in the game.

In the East, Columbia and Penn met with similar success. The Red and Blue, talented but young, slaughtered Boston College, 86-65 in the opening round of the ECAC tournament at Madison Square Garden, and came within three points of Purdue in the semifinals. Then in the consolation match with St. Joseph's, Penn romped again, 88-69.

Columbia did at least as well, with victories over 20th-ranked Villanova, 76-64, at the ECAC's and a drubbing of Wake Forest 101-78.

Dartmouth won the Vanderbilt tournament, whipping the host team in the process. And Cornell, which had a 1-5 record before Christmas, surprised Brigham Young 68-62, and shocked Villanova. 63-58. Only Brown, who is destined for a dismal season, fared poorly.

In Addition

Then there was Harvard. Coach Bob Harrison bad scheduled a murderous series of holiday games for a Crimson team that is still two years away from Eastern prominence. But Harvard stood up surprisingly well. Playing without Dale Dover for part of the trip the Crimson lost four of five games, but the competition was the stiffest Harvard has ever faced. At Greenshoro, it was third ranked North Carolina. Harvard lost. 92-74, but held UNC's All-American Charlie Scott to less than 20 points.

It was worse at 13th-ranked Jacksonville. but not humiliating. It was close in the consolation round at Greensboro, where Harvard lost by cleven to tough Southern Illinois. And it was encouraging at DePaul, where the Crimson upended a DePaul quintet that had won seven-of-nine games.

Harvard, perhaps, will have another discouraging season. It has little hope of even breaking even against the lineup of Columbus. Princeton, Penn, Dartmouth and Yale that it must face in the next two months.

But help is on the way, in the form of a magnificent freshman team, and the promise of several more to come. Princeton and Dartmouth will be stronger, too. Penn is already a national-caliber squad. as is Columbia. Black athletes, perhaps, are a big part of the renaissance, and after the spectre of the recent Texas-El Paso squad, where all five black starters received worthless certificates of attendance in place of diplomas after pacing the Miners to the NCAA title, more and more of them are going Ivy. And more and more of the Ivies are going big-time.