Less than a month into his first season with Harvard, coach Tommy Amaker was feeling good.
After a 62-51 win over Michigan on Dec. 1, Amaker had not only stuck it to his former team, he had also pulled the Crimson's record up to .500 in the tough early going of the non-conference season.
It looked as if Harvard, which hasn't broken the seven-win barrier in Ivy play since 1997, was on the upswing.
But the Crimson didn't win another game in 2007, losing seven in a row and dispelling the notion that a big-time coach would immediately lead to big-time results.
Harvard fired Frank Sullivan, its coach of 16 years, after a 5-9 Ivy campaign in 2006-07, and was looking to shake things up in what has been a stagnant program.
With Amaker came Cem Dinc, a 6-foot-11 Turkish forward who was born in Germany and has had a tumultuous journey through the American basketball scene.
After a year at Indiana, a declaration for the NBA draft and a stint at a community college, Dinc came to Cambridge, Mass. The Harvard basketball community had high hopes for him.
But in his debut season, he hasn't logged a minute on the court.
With Dinc on the bench and 7-foot center Brian Cusworth graduated, the Crimson have looked to their backcourt to set the tone.
Sophomore Jeremy Lin leads the team in scoring (13.2 points per game) and assists (3.4), and junior Drew Housman is not far behind in either category.
While sophomore forward Pat Magnarelli hasn't put up dazzling numbers, he has held together the Harvard frontcourt in Cusworth's absence. After missing the entirety of the conference schedule last year, he has put up 10.8 points and 6.3 rebounds per game so far this season.
"We tried to recruit him at Brown, we thought he was a very good player," Penn coach Glen Miller said of the 6-foot-7 Magnarelli. "He's had a terrific year to this point, he's probably one of the better front-court players in the league."
Although the Crimson were picked to finish sixth in the league and lost one of two meetings to Dartmouth, they might ruffle a few feathers during the upcoming conference slate.
"I think they're capable of beating any team in our league on any given night," Miller said.
That may be, but for Amaker, one thing is becoming clear.
He's not in the Big Ten anymore.
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