Pride.

Two weeks ago Harvard men's basketball coach Peter Roby scribbled the word on a blackboard in the visiting team locker room at the Palestra arena in Philadelphia. His team had just evacuated the court at halftime of the Harvard-Penn game after being embarrassed 39-24 in the opening stanza.

When Roby would finish his lesson in the small room and the players would return to the court, the rest of the basketball contest would become, not a matter of strength or quickness or talent--but pride.

Somewhere

"Once you just give up you're nowhere," Kyle Dodson said. "If Harvard does the best Harvard can do and that leaves us behind 15 or 20, that's o.k."

The Crimson rebounded and outscored Penn in the second half, the team's best half during a weekend in which Harvard suffered its most crushing and devastating defeat of the season at the hands of Princeton.

"We didn't win the [Penn] game, but we won some self-respect," Matt DeGreef said.

Unfortunately, self-respect may be only thing Harvard can expect to win when it ventures down to Durham, N.C., this weekend to face Duke. The contest against the nation's second-ranked team is probably the biggest college basketball mismatch of the year since North Carolina demolished Manhattan in December, 129-45.

"The kid caught it and shot it in one motion," said Manhattan assistant coach Bob Dellebovi describing a Tar Heel's fluid motions during his team's loss to UNC. "There was nothing our kids could do."

The Crimson are outmatched against Duke, giving size and strength at every position on the court. While Duke will be pleased to put another win in the record books, Harvard will measure its success in Durham by a slightly different standard.

"If you get blown out by 50, but you think you played well, that's a good game," says Captain Pat Smith. "If you lose by 20 and Duke doesn't play well and you don't play well, that's a wasted game."

"We are looking at it realistically. It's a preparation game for us so we have to go down there and do our stuff," Dodson says.

"If we don't give them a reason to respect us, it will be a long evening," forward Fred Schernecker says.

Though they're not writing the game off just yet, the Crimson players acknowledge that if the game resembles Louisiana State University's NCAA record trouncing of Southwestern University (Texas) by 91 points, they will probably be on the short end of a lopsided score.

But if the Crimson can keep the contest close, an "impossible" win is always possible.