Black College Sports Review 5SS
He's baggin
By RON MORRIS
Special To The Review
For a young man who envisioned a
year of bagging groceries, Earl Harvey
has done quite well for himself as a col
. lege quarterback this season, thank
you.
In his freshman year at North
Carolina Central University in
Durham, N.C., Harvey has bagged 11
school and two NCAA Division II
records. With 3,190 yards passing in 10
games, Harvey is on a pace to leave his
name scattered throughout the Central,
CIAA and NCAA record books
before he departs.
"If you had told me a year ago that
all this was going to happen, I would
have said you were crazy," says
Harvey, who only 12 weeks ago left his
home in Fayetteville to attend the only
school that made him a serious offer of
a scholarship to play quarterback.
"To tell you the truth, when we
started off this year, we didn't know
who our auarterhacW wnnlH h*? M cave
Central Coach Hank Lattimore. "It
started out with (backup Anthony)
Hamm getting most of the attention.
Then Harvey started moving up into
the race for a starting position. Now,
here's a freshman we're talking about
who has set some NCAA records."
Harvey's performances have left
several opposing CIAA coaches a little
dazed. Each probably thought he had
seen the last of Central's vaunted passing
game when Gerald Fraylon
departed at the end of last season.
4<It\ fr*1ir wore ci?"?r?4? "io ?
w wwii ivui j v uj j jiuwv T?t iiau a
team without a Fraylon," Lattimore
said quite prophetically in the
preseason. *'1 imagine people have
forgotten that anybody else can play
quarterback at Central.
"But I'll tell you something: I think
this kid's going to change the minds of
a whole lot of people."
It didn't take long for Lattimore's
prediction to come true. When Harvey
passed for a school-record 389 yards in
a 41-40 Central loss on Oct. 26,
Elizabeth City State Coach Thurlis
"Moose" Little had seen what Lattimore
spoke about.
"We finally got rid of Fraylon, now
we have to face this guy three more
years," said Little, who favors a prolific
passer himself with his Mississippi
Valley-patterned "Nasty" offense.
"That's not a pleasant thought."
The thought of Harvey carrying his
6-foot-3, 195-pound frame onto Central's
O'Kelly Stadium Field every
Saturday for three more seasons is
most pleasing to Lattimore. So happy
is Lattimore with Harvey's progress at
Quarterback, the Pentr al /tAa/ik.HM
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Page 4-Oec ember, 1986 555555S5S5SSS
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1
Shades Of Fraylon
Harvey rolls out to pass against arc
by Joe Daniels).
staff is gearing its no-huddle offense
more and more to the passing game.
In Central's 55-0 victory over Bowie
State on Nov. 2, one in which Harvey
threw fnr a CfKnnl r ? ?
? - m w. m uwii wl~l wv/i u L y 111^ luur
touchdowns in only three quarters of
action, the Eagles experimented with
not using running backs. In effect, Lattimore
? like Little ? is testing the virtually
untested CIAA waters of a wideopen
passing game.
"We wnrlr HarH a? ? ??1?
- - - ? ? , >iH> w uii uui ^dKtlllg
game," Lattimore says. "There's no
question about it, we do put a lot of effort
and time into our passing game. It
takes about three coaohes, and we
don't have many coaches, to work with
the passing game.
"Because of that, he's under
ese days, n
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:hrival North Carolina A&T (photo
f
pressure. I imagine he goes into every
ballgame feeling that pressure. He
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t\nv/TT j iiv id me i uwud ui our onense
and I think he has accepted that well.
"But it hasn't been easy for him.
He's had some difficult ballgames and
he's taken some hard licks out there.
But he's gotten right back up and gone
back after it."
Accepting the pressure did not come
easy for Harvey. His quiet nature combined
with the uncertainty of his
abilities left Harvey gun-shy at the
outset. Unsure of himself, even in an
intoinaa) ? *w
???vi tivw suuduun, riarvcy said he
didn't have many alternatives to college.
"Really, this is like a dream to me,'Harvey
said in the pre-season. "When
\
ot groceries
I was in high school, I just had plans to
get out and get a job, go to work. I
figured I'd be bagging groceries or in
the army right now."
He certainly never figured to be
leading a North Carolina Central football
team Jnto New York's Yankee
Stadium for a meeting with powerful
Grambling State. For a kid who had
never left the state of North Carolina
and never flown on an airplane,
quarterbacking a college team under
those circumstances was probably too
much to ask. Following a 45-14 loss to
the Tigers, one in which the admittedly
scared quarterback threw four interceptions,
Harvey thought maybe he
should bag football.
"I felt so bad after that game
because it was a dream to play against
Grambling. The only time I had ever
seen them was on TV," says Harvey,
who was in tears following a 15-of-33
Dassinc nerfftrmanrp that
. c i- ? ?v?vu winy
207 yards passing.
Two weeks later in a loss to
Winston-Salem State, Harvey threw
three interceptions and managed only
147 yards passing. Against Elizabeth
City, Lattimore had to bench Harvey
early in the game.
"He's emotional; he wants to do
well," Lattimore says. "We had to
take him out of the ballgame until he
settled down. He was off-target and he
was missing people. We told him to
just settle down and things would work
A ??
OUl.
Those games have been the exceptions
for Harvey, whose best qualities
are a strong and accurate arm,
Generally, Harvey has been cool under
the pressure of running a no-huddle offense
in which the quarterback calls
every play at the line of scrimmage.
Parlu * -ii:
uuiij in uiv 9c<uuii| Ldiuiuore was sending
most plays to Harvey from the
sideline. By the third game, Harvey
was on his own.
"With each game, his play selection
has been better,'1 Lattimore says.
"He's looking at the (defensive)
coverage well now. He's more confident
in what he's doing."
The freshman has to be a quickwitted
quarterback because the Eagle
receivers run their own patterns, in effect
taking whatever the secondary
gives them. Under these circumstances,
Harvey sometimes has to try to read his
teammates' minds. He did an excellent
job of this in his first season.
Harvey's new-found confidence is
beginning to show in all areas. The
modest rookie eniovs talking fr#*lv
, , e>
about how Central's offensive line and
its receivers should get credit for his
success. Harvey has been sacked only
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