It has been said a thousand times, to the verge of being a truism: Soft-talking gentlemanly Tom Sanders brought a new cool, calm and collected atmosphere to Harvard basketball this year.

Everyone, from sportswriters to alumni to Sports Illustrated, commented on the change. Now, the referees have spoken.

Sportsmanship Award

The College Basketball Officials Association has chosen Harvard as the recipient of its annual Schoenfeld Award for Sportsmanship, Sanders announced last night at the team's 1973-74 awards banquet.

The award, going to the collegiate cage team in the nation with the most courteous manners on the hardwood, will be presented to the Crimson April 6 in New York. Sanders will not be present to pick up the trophy, however, because he will announce a Celtics playoff game in Buffalo that night for a local TV station, he said.

Sanders announced another new development for Crimson basketball: The 1974-75 season will usher in two floor generals at the IAB instead of the traditional one. Junior bigmen Lou Silver and Lenny Adams will serve as co-captains of a Harvard squad that will return nine of eleven players. Sanders picked the dual captains after a series of team ballotings ended in tie-votes.

Silver also bagged another honor at the dinner, winning the Coaches Trophy for the most valuable player of the year. The Best Defensive Player Plaque went to senior guard Ken Wolfe, the consistent mainstay of the Sanders' man-to-man "dog 'em" defense.

Sanders introduced some new laurels, too. He gave the "Unsung Hero Award," for the player whose efforts earned least attention during the season, to sophomore forward Bill Carey. Sanders awarded a special plaque to ex-freshman coach John Harvey for his help in easing the transition from the Bob Harrison regime to that of newcomers Sanders, Paul Lyons and Mike Jarvis.