According to the axiom that it's darkest right before dawn, a huge sunbeam should encompass the Indoor Athletic Building Monday morning. Harvard's weekend basketball hopes are about as dim as the overhead lighting in the antiquated sports complex.

Tom Sanders's home head coaching debut against the University of Connecticut last week was a fiasco. Not only did UConn romp, 80-52, but Sanders found out about Cambridge basketball apathy. An estimated 1100 fans gave Satch about 20 seconds of half-hearted welcoming applause that got drowned out by the announcer's microphone. In the Crimson's season opener two weeks ago at UMass, Sanders got two standing ovations from over 4000 hoop followers. I guess he could find some solace in the pre-game dinner President Bok held in honor of the new coaching staff and their families.

This weekend will be twice as bad as the last one. The Crimson faces both Boston College and Brown. Brown has virtually the same team that gave last year's talent-laden Harvard unit fits. B.C., which beat Brown by two while Harvard was getting drubbed by UConn, has four starters 6 ft. 5 in. or taller and two 6 ft. 7 in. reserves on the bench.

Sanders can blame the energy crisis for half of his upcoming weekend headache. Not only is the fuel shortage raising the cost of maintaining his Cadillac Fleetwood with the "Celtics 16" license plates, but it caused the Brown game, originally slated for February 1, to be rescheduled because of the academic calendar change.

Cecil Rhodes is causing Sanders more trouble. Six ft. eight in. captain Tony Jenkins, half of Sanders's big man tandem up front, will be in the Midwest tonight trying to earn one of Mr. Rhodes's recently-become-controversial scholarships. Harvard managed to change the Brown game from Saturday to Sunday night so Jenkins can be around to guard the Bruins' stringbean leaper Phil Brown. The B.C. contest couldn't be rescheduled and the Eagles' sophomore star Bob Carrington should be able to skyrocket his 20-points-a-game average.

Things will get better for Sanders. He came in during a rebuilding year, taking over a team that lost seven seniors, including three starters.

There's less talent to work with this year but the squad is playing team ball now, everybody's in shape and Sanders revived a forgotten technique around Harvard basketball: defense. His dark weekends should end a lot sooner than the energy crisis.