The Harvard men's basketball team last night rounded out a trio of winter break victories by demolishing Salem State, 80-59, before 300 at Briggs Athletic Center.

The victory boosted the cagers' record to 8-0--the best start in Harvard basketball history and made the Crimson one of only five undefeated Division 1 basketball teams.

Each of the 14 team members present saw time in the contest, which came after a two week layoff. It was the first game this season in which the Crimson has outscored its opponent from the field.

On December 21, the cagers traveled to Burlington, Vt, and downed the University of Vermont, 79-58. That victory came on the heels of a 67-66 Harvard defeat of visiting Holy Cross on December 18.

The win that completed the hat trick came in Salem State's first-ever contest against a Division I opponent. The Division III Vikings never led, trailed 49-28 at halftime, but still managed to impress Harvard Coach Frank McLaughlin.

"They came here and played pretty well," the Crimson mentor allowed, but there was no denying that his own squad played better than pretty well, racking up a 67.7 first-half field goal percentage (55 percent for the game) while committing only 12 personal fouls.

As he has in every game this year, senior Co-Captain Joe Carrabino led Harvard in scoring, with 23 points. Co-Captain Bob Ferry added 20, junior guard Arne Duncan quietly tallied 18 in just 28 minutes, but make no mistake about it, the evening belonged to the subs.

Freshmen Kyle Dodson and Bill Mohler put in first-half appearances, and returned in the second stanza. And when the final buzzer sounded, four of the five Harvard players on the floor concluded their varsity debuts.

"I'm going to go back to my dorm room," said freshman Eric Wanta, a two-point contributor, "and call everyone I know and tell 'em I played, I played."

"We've been working in practice, really hard," agreed classmate Tom Morrison, "and it feels good to go out there and score a basket and get your feet wet."

The old man on the court for much of the second half was junior Greg Wildes, who pitched in four points and a hefty dose of calming experience to his nervous teammates. "I think they're good--I think they have a lot of promise," he said.

The cagers posted a less promising victory over Holy Cross, however, before 1200, the largest Briggs crowd of the season.

The Crusaders, who fell to 1-6, held the hosts even for 14 minutes, when the one-two-three punch of Ferry, Dodson and Carrabino gave Harvard a 31-25 advantage.

Riding a 37-27 halftime lead, the Crimson--with the exception of Carrabino, who notched a game-high 25--appeared to emerge from the locker room in a trance.

"We're happy we won, but we can't settle for the way we won." McLaughlin said of the one-point victory his squad, ranked first in New England, posted over fifth-ranked Holy Cross.

"The first 15 minutes of the second half, we were complacent," he said, but added of Carrabino, "If there's a better player in New England, a clutch player, I haven't seen him."

The forward again came through against Vermont, tallying 23 points and pulling down 10 rebounds in what McLaughlin later called "the [early-season] game I feared the most."

That contest marked Keith Webster's return to the form he demonstrated at the end of last season--the sophomore guard had 20 points, just one shy of Ferry's season-high 21.

The Crimson returns to Ivy League competition tomorrow afternoon at Briggs at 1 p.m., when it faces Dartmouth. Harvard posted a 71-56 win at Hanover in mid-December, and the Big Green will be out for revenge.