In the last year and a half of his career, Harvard men's basketball standout Joe Carrabino never missed a free throw in the last five minutes of any game.

During the same period, Carrabino also dribbled the ball exactly six times before each of those free throws. Not five, not seven, Six.

The pattern was this same, unchanging chain of events: foul, whistle, dribble, swish.

For Carrabino-and most athletes-it doesn't matter how it works; only that it does work. They call it superstition, they call it technique, or they call it fate. But whatever the ritual, athletes need it to perform.

Take men's tennis team Co-Captain David Beckman '85. He has been playing tennis for 13 years. For 10 of those 13, whenever he is in changeover, he has taken four sips of water. Not five, not three, Four.

Carrabino will not play comfortably unless he is second to last out of the locker room before each game. He will not play unless he is wearing a brand-new pair of socks.

Varsity golfer Robert Harper plays in a royal-blue Izod shirt. It is the same shirt he wore when he first broke par at the age of nine. It is a bit small, he says, but once again he will be wearing it this spring.

"What we all do is make an effort to get a handle on our lives," says head tennis and squash coach David Fish. "People have an experience, a tough match where they were on top, and they associate all the variables of that experience as having to be present."

In the next confrontation, he adds, the player will want to reproduce his previous performance To do this, all the variables will also have to be reproduced.

With this systemization, a superstition, is so incorporated into the repertoire that it is inseparable from it.

"I always wipe the bottom of my sneakers with my right hand, then my left," says Sean P. Doyle '85, a varsity volleyball player, adding. "I put everything on right to left." Doyle has been doing this for five years.

Women's varsity swimming team co-captain Cary Mazzone '85 says, "I stretch in a particular way, and I always stretch in the same way."

Men's varsity hockey player and this year's Ivy Player of the Year Scott Fusco '86 puts on each part of his uniform at a certain time before game-start. "Anything you do to make yourself comfortable, to help yourself play better, is a good idea," he says.

Varsity basketball upstart Keith Webster '87 has his own careful routine as well. "I tuck in my shirt and lace my sneakers in a certain way," he says. "Everything is in a certain routine pattern." Webster also says that if the pattern is not followed exactly, it will "hang on my mind a bit."

It is often hard to distinguish between technique and superstition in sports. Harvard men's tennis singles whiz William Stanley '87 includes his penchant for bouncing the ball four times before each serve in the category of technique, specifically rhythm.