Know Thy Enemy: Here Comes Your Harvard....

Harvard Men's Basketball has never won an Ivy League championship and has not earned a bid to the N.C.A.A. tournament in more than sixty years.

On March 2, 2008, the New York Times published a well-researched and undisputed factual report of the questionable efforts undertaken by the Harvard Basketball program to change its "winning percentage." In particular, the New York Times investigated the recruiting tactics undertaken by the Crimson coaching staff and showed prima facie evidence that Harvard violated National Collegiate Athletic Association rules and regulations and compromised the University's own academic standards.

Harvard's tactics seem to be working, at least in terms of winning basketball games. The Crimson have built a talented roster of players and are off to one of their best campaigns in school history, but the program's conduct has yet to be investigated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association and this Saturday, Cornell fans get an opportunity in Newman Arena to view firsthand the "product" of Harvard's conduct.

Below are key points and excerpts from the New York Times' published findings (the full article can be read by clicking here):

• Harvard is willing to and is accepting players with lower academic standards than in previous years. In other words, Harvard's current basketball team is less representative of the academic quality of the Harvard student body than in years past. Arguably, this practice violates the mission of the Ivy League. Yale Coach James Jones told the New York Times that he had seen an academic change at Harvard. “It’s eye-opening because there seems to have been a drastic shift in restrictions and regulations with the Harvard admissions office. We don’t know how all this is going to come out, but we could not get involved with many of the kids that they are bringing in.”

• Two former Harvard assistant coaches, Bill Holden and Lamar Reddicks, who worked under former coach, Frank Sullivan, told the New York Times they adhered to even tougher recruiting/admissions standards when they worked at Harvard than the current Harvard coaching staff under Amaker.

• In addition to lowering admissions standards, Harvard likely violated NCAA Rules, which are solely enforced by the NCAA governing body. According to the New York Times, "many in the coaching community said [Harvard coach, [Tommy] Amaker’s staff had behaved unethically."
  

• Current Harvard sophomore Keith Wright admitted to the New York Times that during June 2007, former Duke player, and long time friend of Amaker, Kenny Blakeney began repeatedly playing pickup games with Wright in Wright's hometown of Norfolk, Va. Norfolk is 400 miles away from Blakeney's hometown of Washington, D.C. Notably here, the month of June is an NCAA-mandated blackout period when college coaches are not permitted indirect or direct contact with prospect recruits. On July 2, 2007, after all of Blakeney's extensive contact and communication with Wright, Blakeney was hired by Amaker to be a Harvard assistant coach. A few months later Wright committed to Harvard. Was this a coincidence? Wright explained to the New York Times, "He actually got to play with us, because he wasn’t actually on Harvard’s staff." Wright added that Blakeney had gone to Norfolk for one of his summer basketball team’s practices. “He didn’t sign anything yet, so he got to play with us, and we talked and exchanged numbers."
  

• Former Brown coach and current Oregon State coach, Craig Robinson told the Times, "If he travels across a state line to play with a kid he’s going to be recruiting, that smacks a little bit of breaking the rules... There’s nothing wrong with pushing the envelope, but if your attempt is to get around the rules, there’s an issue."

• Surely what happened with Wright could not happen twice. Or could it? Max Kenyi, a current Harvard sophomore also reported the same conduct by Blakeney to The New York Times. Specifically that Blakeney initiated contact with Kenyi during June and that Blakeney played basketball with him “a couple of times” at Kenyi's high school. Kenyi committed to Harvard only after Blakeny was formally hired in July 2007. “He was someone I could relate to,” Kenyi said, “someone I could talk to about anything.”
  

• Harvard's suspicious recruiting conduct, which has yet to go investigated by the NCAA, was not just limited to Wright and Kenyi.
  

• Another potential recruiting violation arose with the recruiting of Zack Rosen, a 6'1" point guard and current sophomore at Penn. Rosen's father Les, told The New York Times that Amaker approached the elder Rosen in a grocery store in Trenton during the Eastern Invitational AAU tournament during the summer of 2007 at the time coaches were restricted only to watching recruits. Rosen recounted Amaker saying, “We really have to get Zack up to Harvard." Mr. Rosen said he thought to himself: "Who goes to ShopRite in the middle of a basketball tournament?" He then added, “It was suspicious."

• During September 2008, Amaker make more headlines when he cut several players from his roster that were recruited by Harvard's predecessor coaching staff in order to make room for Amaker's new recruits, such as Kenyi and Wright.

• Today, Harvard's undisputed best player is Jeremy Lin, a talented senior guard. It is undisputed that Lin was not recruited to Harvard by Amaker or his coaching staff but was instead successfully recruited to Harvard by Frank Sullivan, Amaker's predecessor. Amaker did not attempt to recruit Lin when Amaker was the head coach at the University of Michigan.