Norfolk Collegiate grad finds hoops success at Harvard

BOSTON

To leave Harvard University's main campus and make the short walk over the Charles River to Lavietes Pavilion, home of the men's basketball team, is to enter the rare arena in which being a Harvard man hasn't been synonymous with success.

History is in the air at Harvard, but there's precious little of it in the rafters of Lavietes, where just one Ivy League men's championship banner hangs.

Harvard is an overwhelming favorite to win another, though. On Sunday afternoon, about 45 minutes before tip-off, fans began streaming into the 2,100-seat gym. Among them was a tall woman wearing jeans, a sweat shirt and a Harvard ball cap, and carrying a portable stadium chair.

Sabrena Tabron took her usual perch in the bleachers behind the Harvard bench and watched her son, team co-captain Keith Wright, lead the Crimson through pre-game stretching.

Harvard went on to defeat the University of Seattle, 80-70. A day later, the unbeaten Crimson cracked the national rankings for the first time in school history.

After more than a century marked mostly by mediocrity and indifference, hoops are suddenly hip at Harvard. With the exception of coach Tommy Amaker, perhaps no two people have more to do with that than Wright, a Norfolk Collegiate graduate, and Tabron, a single parent.

He's the Crimson's best player - the one Amaker built his team around. It was her plan - in which basketball was never the main focus - that led him here.

"Boy, have we had a journey," Tabron said. "I could not have asked for a better one."

The journey took Tabron and her three children across the country, from San Francisco to Virginia Beach, a decade ago. A marketing professional, Tabron was looking for an affordable community with good schools. Her research led her to Princess Anne High and its International Baccalaureate program.

"I just wanted to give my kids a better way of life," she said.

After a three-year detour to Northern Virginia - a marriage that didn't work out took her there - Tabron and her children returned to Virginia Beach. A coach spotted the hulking Wright, then a sophomore, walking the halls at Princess Anne and suggested he come out for basketball.

His response: "You need to talk to my mother. She doesn't let me play sports."

Tabron wasn't interested in raising an athlete. Academics were her priority. For Wright, that meant extra homework and no let-up in his studies. Though he'd shuttled from school to school throughout his life, he'd always maintained good grades.

Wright made the team at Princess Anne and found that basketball gave him newfound confidence. He told his mother he wanted to play in college.

Tabron was incredulous. She'd seen him in action, and it wasn't pretty.

"I said, 'Oh my God, you are horrible,' " Tabron recalled, laughing. "We need to hire someone."

Tabron hired renowned trainer Ganon Baker, who was then based locally, but has since gone on to work with some of the biggest names in the sport. Wright also went to a sports training facility to work on his balance, quickness and footwork.

When Norfolk Collegiate coach Jim Markey first saw him shortly after, Wright was still raw. "The 14th man on a 14-man AAU team," Markey said. But at 6-foot-7 and 245 pounds, he had nimble feet and soft hands.

"The Dancing Bear, that's what I nicknamed him," Markey said.

Wright transferred to Collegiate for his final two years of high school, reclassifying as a junior after two years at P.A. It gave him an extra year to develop as a player. Wright did, and college coaches began coming around. Given his stellar grades, Wright was determined to attend an Ivy League school. Craig Robinson, then the coach at Brown, was among the first to visit. Others soon followed.

When Harvard called, though, Wright didn't need to hear from anyone else.

"Harvard speaks for itself," he said.

Wright would have gone to Harvard regardless of who the coach happened to be. He was making a lifetime decision, not a basketball one. That Harvard had recently hired Amaker, a former Duke player who had been coach at Seton Hall and Michigan, was icing on the cake.

Amaker took over a program that had just two winning seasons in the previous 10. Wright was his first recruit, and the key to everything Amaker was hoping to build.

"We considered him a must-get player for us, for what we were trying to accomplish, and how we wanted to play, which was inside-out basketball," Amaker said.

Wright would become the hub of the Harvard wheel, the post player through which the Crimson ran its offense. He averaged eight points as a freshman, 8.9 as a sophomore and 14.8, 8.3 rebounds and 1.8 blocks as a junior last season for a team that tied Princeton for the Ivy League title. Harvard lost, by a point, in a one-game playoff for the Ivy's automatic bid to the NCAA tourney. The Crimson haven't been there since 1946.

At 8-0, and No. 25 in this week's AP poll, Harvard is looking to end that 65-year drought this season.

The team's success has staid old Harvard worked up, relatively speaking. Wright said that three seasons ago, a Sunday afternoon contest against a non-conference team would have been played in a mostly empty arena. The Seattle game drew 1,896, a virtual throng at Harvard. The crowd included a couple hundred students, a pep band clad in crimson blazers, and, possibly, given the setting, the odd Nobel Laureate or titan of industry.

They witnessed a game in which Harvard put on a ball-movement clinic at times. Wright, now 6-8 and 240 pounds, and noticeably leaner and quicker than in high school, set up shop on the low block. On one possession, eight passes resulted in him getting a layup. On many others, with Seattle players phone-boothing him, giving him no room to maneuver, he passed out of double teams.

It was not his best game. With Seattle determined to stop him, he scored five points and grabbed four rebounds in 24 minutes. Wright averaged 32 minutes a game a year ago. On a deeper squad this year, he doesn't have to play as much, but is no less valuable, Amaker said.

"We rely on him to do a lot for us," he said. "We're not going to shy away from that. That's been the formula and it's worked well. Keith has delivered time and time again."

Wright is the team's primary inside presence, with a polished low-post game and a variety of moves. He's also a deft passer and anchors the team's man-to-man defense. The reigning Ivy League Player of the Year, he's the face of the team.

While he's thrilled to be such a big part of the program's growth, he talks with even more enthusiasm about his experience as a whole at Harvard.

"It's been everything and more," he said. "My future's pretty much set."

A psychology major, Wright's made the connections you'd expect at Harvard. He interned at a Boston law firm last summer. He's gained entry into an exclusive circle. But it's one that's more diverse than many people think, and not the bastion of overprivilege it's sometimes portrayed to be, Wright said.

"There's a lot of humble people here," he said. "Kids that come from a lot of money that you wouldn't even know came from a lot of money, trying to make a name for themselves and not ride on their parents' names.

"There are kids that really haven't come from anything, and have scholarships, and you wouldn't even know. Everyone's friendly. They don't treat you like you are above or below anyone else."

Being an athlete gets you few, if any, extra privileges. Wright has taken a full class load each semester. He's got a pair of 20-page papers due Friday, a day after the Crimson play at Connecticut, and a final exam Monday.

It's what he signed up for, to be treated no differently than any other student.

He plans to play professional ball, most likely overseas, then return to school and become a couples therapist.

"The ball's going to stop bouncing, and you've got to be ready," he said.

That's the lesson Tabron has drilled into him for years.

"I started positioning him when he was little, telling him basketball will never define you," she said.

"This will," she added, pointing to her head.

When Wright's younger sister, Morgan, graduated from high school and enrolled in college in New York, Tabron moved from Virginia Beach to Waltham, Mass., about 10 minutes from Harvard.

It was cheaper than flying up for games, she said. As Wright's career winds down, Tabron says she's trying to wrap her arms around every minute. She moved a decade ago to give her son a chance to exceed the expectations society often has for African-American boys raised by single parents. And to exceed those many have for African-American athletes.

The move was a parenting slam dunk.

"Harvard?" she said. "What else could you ask for?"

Ed Miller, (757) 446-2372, ed.miller@pilotonline.com