There are some 32 former Boston Celtic players now coaching basketball, but they rarely get is chance to match wits across the collegiate hardcourt. Tonight will be one of those rare occasions, as Tom Sanders sends his Harvard squad against Bob Brannum's Brandeis five at 8 p.m. in the Indoor Athletic Building.

The Brannum-Sanders encounter marks only the second time in collegiate history that two Celtic-taught mentors have faced each other. The only other known confrontation was between Brannum, while he was coaching at Norwich, and K.C. Jones, who was then guiding Brandeis.

Brannum has impressive credentials for coaching. He was one of the youngest All-Americans at age 17, while under the tutelage of Adolph Rupp at Kentucky, as well as being an All-American at two different schools, earning the honor at Michigan State after World War II. The burly Brandies mentor played as a professional with the Celts in the early '50s before going on to spend 14 years as a coach at Norwich, Kenyon and now Brandeis.

He bring as 11-4 Brandeis squad into Cambridge tonight that is among the top sex scoring teams in the NCAA Division III and features one of New England's hottest small-college players. Mike Fahey of Somerville. The 5-ft. 11-in. guard is averaging 29.5 points a game and in the second leading scorer in his division in the nation.

Brandels is touting Fahey as a candidate for the Naismith trophy, given to the best collegiate player in the country under 6 ft., but he appears to be an underdog to North Carolina's Monty Tow for that award.

One for the Books

For coach Brannum, this will be the second time in his five-year career at Brandeis that he has faced Harvard. The last time the Crimson came before the Judges was in 1972, in a historic Walthem confrontation that set several precedents in the Harvard record books.

Bom Harrison's Crimson squad, under the direction of Jim Fitzsimmons (35 points) set the Harvard record for most points scored--125--in a single game as well as the all-time record for most points allowed, 117. The two squads also set a Harvard game record for most personal fouls in a single contest as the Crimson racked up 33 while Brandeis picked up 31.

For Sanders, this is his first try against Brandeis and his first face-to-face meeting with another Celtic alumnus.