On a squad with half freshmen, success for the Crimson men’s basketball team will depend on the leadership and performance of its three senior stalwarts.

Andrew Pusar, Drew Housman, and Evan Harris have seen many things in their three previous years: high expectations, low expectations, a coaching change, teammates coming and leaving, thrilling last minute victories, crushing last minute defeats, sold-out crowds storming Lavietes Pavilion in jubilation, and crowds numbering in the few hundreds. But one thing they have not experienced is an Ivy League title, having never even challenged for the championship late in the season.

Of course, the lack of Ivy championships is nothing unique for a Harvard senior class, as The Crimson has not won one since Ivy League play began in 1956. But with a talented incoming freshman class combined with a deep group of upperclassmen, the seniors believe this can be their year.

“This team is unique: we have such a mix of younger guys and older guys,” says Pusar, the Crimson’s 6’2” captain from New Jersey. “My goal is to bring us all together, get on the same page, get us ready to win. I know, as us seniors, we want to win going out.”

Bringing so many youngsters together and getting them up-to-speed on everything may be tough for one person, but luckily for Pusar, he has two classmates who have been through the wars with him in Harris and Housman.

“As a senior, you’re expected to lead anyways,” says Harris, a 6’8” forward from Los Angeles. “Andy’s our captain, we kind of follow his lead, but I feel that Drew and myself, when Andy’s not on the floor or not around, we need to lead by example.”

Harris and Pusar have been consistently starting since their sophomore seasons. Housman, a 6’ point guard from Southern California who rooms with Pusar in Mather House, got a leg up on them when he was thrown into the starting lineup from the first game of his freshman year.

The three seniors have not gotten off to the best of starts this year, as they have all picked up knocks in training. Housman hurt his ankle recently, while Harris has inflammation in his knee. But they all expect to be ready for the start of the season next Wednesday at New Hampshire.

That opener is the first in a long campaign the seniors hope will end in the NCAA tournament in March. Expectations are high, with the team picked fourth in the preseason Ivy League media poll. But the expectations are unlikely to go to the heads of the seniors, as before their freshmen campaign, the team—with another talented senior class—was picked to finish second in the league. Harvard rewarded those expectations with eight straight league losses in February and March to finish closer to the bottom than the top.

Four years before that, another senior-laden team was expected to contend for the 2002-03 title, only to lose 10 of its final 12 games. This senior class can’t wait to shed that underachieving label attached to the program.

“There’s been such a culture of losing surrounding this program for such a long time,” Housman says. “People feel that this is Harvard, we shouldn’t be winning. If we have one of the best teams, we need to be competing. It’s an attitude we got to have. If we’re solid, we have to go out there and show it.”

Making those losing streaks so painful for the players is how easily avoidable they have been. The 2005-06 team’s skid began with two last-second losses to Cornell and Princeton, while two years ago, the Crimson fell to Princeton in double overtime despite 33 points from Housman as the first of its five straight losses.

To be in contention at season’s end, the team must avoid the long losing streaks that have plagued the team in Ivy play. Two years ago, Harvard dropped five straight games in February, while last season, it lost seven in a row on top of another seven game skid in non-league play. The pressure falls to the three seniors to keep the team strong should adversity arise this year, but they know what needs to be done.

“The biggest things for us are keeping our focus day in and day out and practicing everyday like it’s a game,” Harris says. “Coach always says if we go into practice and practice as hard as we can and then when we get out of practice, ask ourselves, if this was a game, would we have won today? If we can consistently answer yes to that question, I don’t think we will have any trouble sustaining success until the end of the year.”

Last year, Harvard lost to Dartmouth one week after blowing out the Big Green, then lost a feisty game at Penn three weeks later after its exam break. But if the players turn those gut-wrenching losses into exhilarating victories in 2009, the script may be different this time.

“If we win a couple of games, we can get a swagger,” Housman says. “Everytime we got in a situation with a rowdy group, the seniors got to step it up.”

But they can’t win the whole thing by themselves. To get their younger teammates ready to contend for the championship, the three seniors have been working hard to set positive examples and get their teammates up to speed on all things team-related.

“Whenever I’m not in, I make sure I’m always trying to talk to a freshman, whether it’s helping them remember a play or just making sure they know what’s going on,” Harris says. “I remember when I was a freshman, the transition from high school to college was huge, so any help that they can get is only going to make us better in the end.”

Their leadership is already having very positive effects on the newcomers.

“The seniors work their balls off,” says freshman forward Andrew Van Nest. “People like Pusar work so hard. The little weaknesses that he has, you don’t even see them. He feels like a superstar on the court. Seeing that is contagious.”

If the senior leadership does spread to the rest of the team, Pusar, Housman, and Harris will not only have done their duties, but the team will likely be playing very meaningful games come the end of February and into March.

—Staff writer Ted Kirby can be reached at tjkirby@fas.harvard.edu.