Last season, a familiar lesson was rudely reinforced for the Harvard men’s basketball team—attempt to challenge the one immutable law of the Ivy hoops universe and the reality of the league’s unchanging landscape will pound your squad into submission.

The 2005-06 campaign was the most highly anticipated in Harvard’s recent history, as the Crimson was expected to challenge Penn and Princeton for its first-ever league title on the strength of a formidable frontcourt. Harvard was picked second in the preseason media poll mainly based on the presence of first-team All-Ivy forward Matt Stehle ’06 and second-team All Ivy center Brian Cusworth, the league’s top two returning scorers and rebounders. Harvard would bludgeon teams with its post presence, the thinking went, dominating the smaller, less skilled big men of the Ancient Eight en route to the top of the standings.

While Stehle and Cusworth performed well, however, their combined interior force could not prevent an eight-game league losing streak at the end of the season that dropped the Crimson to a 5-9 Ivy record, perhaps the most disappointing finish in school history.

“At this time last year there was a lot of energy, a lot of hype, a lot of excitement about the return of Matt and Brian, because of their scoring, for their rebounding,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan says. “I think at the end we all realized this is a guard-dominated league, always was, always will be. You have to be solid at the one, two, and three spots.”

An analysis of the Ivy League’s guard orientation must begin at the three-point arc, which, in the college game, stands just 19’9 away from the basket (as opposed to 23’9 in the NBA). While this has affected the style of collegiate play in general, causing a natural selection away from traditional, lumbering pivotmen towards players better suited to knock down the trifecta, the effect has become even more pronounced in the Ivy League.

The nature of the level of competition and the limited national exposure in the Ivies means the league is unable to attract the biggest, most skilled frontcourt players or the quickest, most athletic guards, who invariably sign with major D-I teams. The result is a preponderence of “catch-and-shoot” players—those who hang on the perimeter waiting for a kick-out from inside for the spot-up three.

The style of play in the league has adjusted to accommodate this evolution, producing offenses like the motion-oriented, three-pointer-generating machine of Princeton, or the fast, guard-driven, up-and-down attack of Penn.

Ivy teams generally employ small, mobile lineups that utilize the three position on the court as a third guard rather than a small forward, capitalizing on the opportunity to add another perimeter shooter to the lineup.

Last year, Harvard went against this grain, utilizing a more traditional, methodical offense flowing through the stalwarts down low and employing 6’5 Michael Beal ’06, who was more rebounding forward than hot-handed guard, at the three spot.

The results on the perimeter were devastating—look no further for the chief factor in last year’s shortcoming than seventh-place league finishes in both three-point field goal percentage and percentage defense.

“We’ve looked all summer at our defensive principles in terms of how we guard the three-point line,” Sullivan says. “Were we giving up threes because of the fast break? Were we giving up threes because of screening? Were we giving up threes because of penetration and pitching? Was it extra passing, was it slow rotation? Turns out [it was] a little bit of everything.”

The Crimson simply had no answer for the barrage from deep that other teams launched, and after opposing defenses clamped down heavily on sharp-shooting Jim Goffredo as the season went on, Harvard had no one else who could consistently knock down threes on the offensive end. The Crimson was also much less adept at moving the ball to the open shooter and maintaining possession, ranking last in assist-turnover ratio.

“When we weren’t able to get open shots from the [three-point line] we tried to just get shots up...we took bad shots,” Goffredo says. “Shot selection has really been an important thing we talked about this offseason. We have some good young shooters on the team, and just everyone with a year more experience...[last year] was a pretty down year for everyone shooting so I think we’ll be a lot better off this year.”

Harvard is hoping that improvement will come from a return to its old guard-oriented blueprint. Sullivan has brought his squad back to the league mean in response to last year’s failure, attempting to find success by catering to the dominant Ivy trend. He recruited four guards, all 6’4 or shorter, and just two frontcourt players, neither taller than 6’7, swinging the balance back to the perimeter for the foreseeable future.

The nucleus of this year’s team has also been transferred from the frontcourt to the backcourt, as Harvard will live and die with the tandem of sophomore point guard Drew Housman, who averaged 10 points and three assists in a standout freshman year, and captain Goffredo, the Crimson’s shooting guard who broke out last year to the tune of a team-leading 14.9 ppg.

At the three spot, Sullivan has several options, which include 6’2 sophomore Andrew Pusar, a rugged defender who will help to limit Harvard’s vulnerability to the deep ball, and smooth-shooting freshman Jeremy Lin, who when on the court would team with Housman and Goffredo to give the team three legitimate threats from beyond the arc.

This year’s squad is thus more reminiscent of the classic guard-driven Crimson teams under Frank Sullivan, chief among them those led by point guard Elliott Prasse-Freeman ’03 and shooting guard Pat Harvey ’03. Prasse-Freeman holds the school’s career record for assists, with 705, and Harvey scored over 1,200 points in his Harvard career. The pair could have a foil this year in Housman and Goffredo.

“We ran a lot of plays through Matt [Stehle] last year, with him being the second big guy down the court, getting the ball to the top, like a point forward,” Goffredo says. “This year we’re going to be running a lot of plays through our three guards, which is how Coach has had his teams be in the past, more the guards running the offense and looking for the bigs inside. We’re getting back to that, and it’s going to be a good model for our team.”

As hard as it was to swallow, Harvard’s attempt to buck the league trend and win with interior muscle ended in failure. The currents of Ivy play proved, once again, far too strong to overcome. Now, the Crimson will be moving with the league flow, and the results of that transformation could be a surprise to the rest of the Ivies.

—Staff writer Caleb W. Peiffer can be reached at cpeiffer@fas.harvard.edu.