The Line on the Lions

NEW YORK--"We're a year away," Columbia basketball coach Tom Penders said, standing in the corridor outside the visiting team's locker room in the IAB last Saturday night before his team played Harvard. After watching the Lions dissect the Crimson's defense with 17-24 shooting in the first half, Penders may have wondered whether he was a year off in his calculations.

This weekend amounts to the year in a nutshell for the Ivy League Big Three of Penn, Princeton, and Columbia. The Quakers and Tigers invade basketball-crazed Morningside Heights tonight and tomorrow night for what promises to be one big roundball rannygazoo.

Coming into this final weekend of play, Penn is 11-1, Columbia is 10-2 and Princeton is 9-3 in league competition. If Columbia sweeps this weekend's games, it will require a playoff game with Penn to decide who goes to the NCAA tournament. Columbia must win at least one game to secure a berth in the National Invitational Tournament, as the second-place team in the Ivy League can usually expect an invitation.

The Lions have come a long way under Penders's tutelage. Three years ago they won only four games. The following year they won eight, and last year 16. Right now they are a cocky and well-disciplined ball club that has won 12 of its last 14 games.

When Penders took over before the 1974-75 season, Columbia's once-illustrious basketball program had hit rock bottom. "The first year was a total waste," he recalls.

There was nothing we could salvage out of it. It's been a steady building process. This wasn't the year I was pointing to but I feel the guys are a much better basketball team than at the same time last year."

The turning point in the Lions' fortunes this year came when they beat Princeton 38-36, in the Tigers' Jadwin Gym. Gene Bentz, whose nose would provide a suitable canvas for a Mount Rushmore miniature, hit a desperation jumper for the win. "When you beat Princeton at their own game, then you're playing very intelligently," Penders said. "As far as I'm concerned that's the biggest win we've ever had."

Penders and Harvard coach Frank McLaughlin are both members of a new breed of young, aggressive coaches who have earned their noms de guerre as recruiters. McLaughlin, who before coming to Harvard recruited hoopsters for Notre Dame as Digger Phelps' assistant, finds the recruiting game so strenuous that he believes no basketball coach can expect his career to exceed ten years.

Penders's record at Columbia lends credence to the old saw that "quality players breed quality players." McLaughlin said he hoped the Crimson's staggering upset of Penn would persuade potential players to come to Harvard next year and set the recruiting cycle in motion. After last weekend's losses the Harvard basketball bubble burst but, as Jack Reardon, Harvard's athletic director noted, "it wasn't much of a bubble."

McLaughlin scoured the country as a talent scout for the Fighting Irish, and this year he has made one junket through Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Washington D.C. to speak to Harvard applicants. Notre Dame, unlike Harvard, provided athletic scholarships, but McLaughlin says "I think I was prepared well for Harvard at Notre Dame because they were very selective about their student athletes. The first thing we have to know is who is a viable candidate. The kids who do qualify are interested because of the academics. Any coach or school would consider it an honor to have one of their players come to Harvard."

McLaughlin is hoping to give Harvard basketball the lustrous image that Penders has given the Columbia program. One advantage McLaughlin has is an alumni network that is on the lookout for basketball talent. Penders declares, "We've pretty much done it all on our own."

"My first full recruiting year I got Mike Wilhite, Jeff Combs and Elmer Love," Penders said. Penders flew out to the coast to persuade Love to come to Morningside Heights over Stanford. Love, however, decided to take this year off, and back-up center Ed Shockley also left the team--to turn campus playwright--breaking his nose in practice.

The following year Penders made his real breakthrough, when he corralled Juan Mitchell, Ricky Free and Alton Byrd, who form the nucleus of the present squad. Byrd is the linchpin of Columbia's attack: despite missing eight games this year, he managed to set Columbia's all-time career assist record.

The year before last Penders said he purposely downgraded his recruiting, to avoid having to cut previously recruited players from the team. Last year Penders accelerated his talent hunt once again, and landed blue-chip freshman Dave Westenburg. Westenberg, who was named Arizona's "Junior of the Year" in high school, is a pure shooter who has been averaging over 70 per cent from the field.

Both Penders and McLaughlin are being considered to replace Dick Stewart, another Young Turk, as head coach of Fordham. Penders was recently interviewed for the past--but right now, all he's thinking about is tonight's impending imbroglio with Penn. As for McLaughlin: as the Harvard mentor said after watching his team lose to the Lions, "I wouldn't mind having a ticket for that game."