If Notre Dame has the luck of the Irish and Boston College has the prayers of the Catholic Church, then Harvard has the curse of the second half collapse.

Joe Restic and his gang have made it infamous, and now the Harvard men's basketball team has followed suit.

Last night at Briggs Cage the Crimson survived its own version of the second half collapse and fought off pesky St. Mary's to win its first exhibition game, 73-65.

Although the Crimson went into the locker room at halftime with a comfortable 18-point lead, the game was far from over.

In fact, it had just begun.

After the cheerleaders came back to the sidelines, the Huskies slowly nipped at the Crimson's lead.

With 4:33 left in the game, Huskie forward William Njoku knotted the score at 61, with an in-your-face tomahawk slam.

Fortunately for the Crimson faithful, the dunk shocked the listless Harvard squad back to life.

On its next possession, Harvard pounded the ball into senior center Arturo Llopis. Looking like Kevin McHale, Llopis executed a beautiful up and under move and sank the shot.

This basket sparked an 11-0 run for the Johnnies that put the game out of the Huskies' reach.

"In the second half, St. Mary's came out a lot stronger," Captain Tyler Rullman said. "They wanted to show that they were not that bad."

St. Mary's came out of the intermission much more aggressive. Its defense picked up its intensity, forcing the Crimson into 15 turnovers, and numerous traveling violations.

The Huskies also swept the boards much better than they had in the first half, grabbing eight offensive rebounds in the second 20 minutes compared to three in the first.

At the same time Harvard looked flat--flat as a Jeff Reardon curveball. The Crimson looked out of sync on offense, and tired on defense.

"Having only twelve days of practice hurt us in handling big leads," Harvard Coach Frank Sullivan said. "The next couple of weeks we will work on how to maintain the tempo throughout the game."