Crimson Cagers Challenge Big Green

The word is out: Harvard is a contender for the Ivy League title in basketball. Tom Sanders has molded a starting five that is now 5-2 in the league and moving to the top. But Dartmouth stands in the way tonight when the cagers take to the hardcourt at 8 p.m.

The last time the Crimson and the Big Green clashed, before Christmas, Tony Jenkins's last second technical foul shot gave Sanders's cohorts a 65-64 squeaker victory. After a rough stretch where the Harvard cagers dropped seven games by three points or less, the Cantabrigians have reeled off four straight wins over Northeastern, Yale, Columbia and Cornell.

When upstart Brown knocked off Penn and Princeton last weekend, the purse strings to the Ivy basketball prize knotted up. With Dartmouth, Penn and Princeton on the schedule for the next three home meetings, the hardwood heartstoppers can make up for lost time, and a week from now rest a menacing second to the Bruins, a menagerie Harvard manhandled December 16, 78-63.

Dartmouth coach Tim O'Connor has spent most of this season trying to fill a vacuum of talent, which exists behind Adam Sutton and Bill Raynor. Sutton, the sophomore forward leading the Ivies in scoring with a 20-point average, and Raynor, the tough little guard who plagued the Crimson at Hanover, have provided O'Connor's only material of substance this year.

Other than that, the Big Green's remaining starters and bench could have as easily been virtual empty space, and the gap has shown in their performance. Witness: the Dartmouth record boasts only three wins against 14 losses for the season, and a single victory in its seven league contests to date.

Yet two of the Big Green's wins have come against B.U., 78-63, and Columbia, 62-53. Harvard fell to the Terriers in the Beanpot, 92-90, and wipped the hapless Lions last Friday by a smaller margin, 58-51.

Thus, despite the prospects of the upcoming Penn-Princeton weekend, Sanders is not looking past the Hanoverian cellar-dwellers.

"We won a tough one last time, and they don't think we can beat them, so we've got to take them one at a time," Sanders said yesterday.