Harvard Schmidt (September 25, 1935 – April 7, 2020) was an American professional basketball player and coach.
A 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m), 195 pounds (88 kg) small forward from Kankakee, Illinois.
Schmidt attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he played from 1954 to 1957 for the men's basketball team.
He also coached the Fighting Illini men's basketball team for seven years from 1967 to 1974.
[1] Schmidt was appointed by his alma mater on March 29, 1967, to succeed Harry Combes who had been his head coach a decade earlier and was pressured into resigning ten days prior by the university which was threatened with expulsion by the Big Ten Conference over a slush fund scandal.