Harvard unfazed by challenges against nation’s elite

Harvard women’s basketball coach Kathy Delaney-Smith is excited. She has set an incredibly challenging schedule, raved about every Crimson player who has touched the floor and predicted a top-30 finish for her team, the reigning Ivy Champions.

So what can stop Harvard? A rising star such as Penn’s Jewel Clark, the physicality of a tough Brown team or the impact of transfer students at Columbia and Cornell? For a team that returns at the top, there is only one automatic route to failure—complacency. However, the Crimson’s nonconference schedule will not allow an apathetic team to leave the court without severely bruised egos and a giant mar on a potentially legendary season.

“One of the strong things we want to do is not be complacent in our nonconference games,” Delaney-Smith said. “This is by far the toughest nonconference schedule we’ve ever had and maybe the toughest in the league. It might be one of the toughest ever in the Ivy League.”

While Harvard’s schedule from last season couldn’t compare to this year’s, the Crimson did face a number of formidable opponents, in Villanova, Kansas St. and Syracuse, each of which resulted in defeat. The closest loss was by a 59-51 margin against Villanova. This year’s team is looking for much more than near-misses. In fact, a 10-2 record in pre-Ivy play is one of the team’s goals.

“There’s been this really subtle mentality, Villanova, we only lost by eight—that’s bad mentality,” Delaney-Smith said. “We are better than that. That has clearly infiltrated our team. We are not going out just to do well against Minnesota, we will go out to win.”

The No. 15 Golden Gophers are not unknown to Harvard, as Minnesota would have been the Crimson’s next opponent had it beaten the Tar Heels at NCAAs last year.

“I think [the Gophers] have the athletes. I was not only impressed with their athleticism but I was impressed with how smart they are on the floor,” Delaney-Smith said regarding Minnesota after Harvard lost to UNC, 85-58.

Harvard has actually faced the Gophers once before—in 1980 at the Princeton Tournament, where the Crimson lost 101-42.

Minnesota is one of three opponents ranked in the top-25 by the Associated Press Preseason Poll, along with No. 12 Vanderbilt, a possible competitor in the Vanderbilt Invitational, and No. 20 Boston College.

The Gophers return all of their starters, including 2002 Big Ten Player of the Year Lindsay Whalen, and Lindsay Lieser, who holds every Minnesota three-point field goal record.

Lieser will test a Crimson defense that had a tough time containing trey shooters last year, but Harvard expects improvement due to the athleticism of its guards. Junior Dirkje Dunham, as well as junior transfer Bev Moore and top recruit Jessica Holsey, pose an answer to a question of guard imbalance.

“The North Carolina matchup had to do with our guard mismatch,” Delaney-Smith said. “I don’t think anyone could do that to us now.”

Harvard’s intention of playing up on the ball for the entire game presents the team’s athletic side and the potential for completely disrupting offenses by forcing opponents to rely on their speed as their only option.

“I hope to wreak havoc with our defense,” Delaney-Smith said. “I hope to go 40 minutes of playing up on the ball and seeing what they can do. So that’s what teams have done to us, and that’s why I’ve waited ten years to be able to do that to other teams.”

With the Crimson’s returning veterans and a possible solution for guard mismatches, one of the few question marks for this team is height. Last year, Tar Heels guard Nikki Teasley, who recently won a WNBA title with the Los.Angeles Sparks, stood at 6’0, made the blunt observation that she could see straight over Crimson point guard Jenn Monti ’02.

Could Teasley play Harvard again, she might have a forehead or two blocking her view as freshman guard Shana Franklin, 6’0, as well as Kate Mannering and Maureen McCaffery, both 6’1, give Harvard a boost in height in several areas of the court. Sophomore Reka Cserny, 6’3, and junior Hana Peljto, 6’2, provide average Division One stature inside, in addition to serving as a dynamic scoring duo. However, in the midst of the shoulders of giants, Delaney-Smith recognizes that Harvard lacks the kind of center found on many national contenders.

“We don’t have the big kid inside,” Delaney-Smith said. “The big kid inside is what’s going to hurt us. That’s a weakness that we have. But most schools don’t have that anyway.”

At the Vanderbilt Invitational, Harvard will have to beat Central Michigan, a team picked last in its conference, to set up a possible matchup with the host Commodores, who were the SEC champs and a No. 1 NCAA seed last year. If so, Harvard would do battle with senior 6’6 center Chantelle Anderson, the quintessential “big kid inside.”

Anderson leads the list of pre-season candidates for the Naismith College Basketball Player of the Year Award. Last season she averaged 21.2 points per game and shot an SEC record and national-leading 72.3 percent from the floor—just one percent off the NCAA record. She couldn’t have been too disappointed, however. She accomplished that feat as a sophomore.

BC will host the Crimson on Dec. 14. The Eagles have the benefit of three returning starters, including junior guard Amber Jacobs, the team’s leading scorer with 11.9 ppg. The return of senior All-America candidate Becky Gottstein after suffering from multiple stress fractures last year may propel BC even farther forward.

The Crimson’s grueling nonconference schedule is not only a measuring stick, but also an effective method of avoiding complacency leading into the Ivy schedule. With much of Harvard’s league-leading offense returning and an outstanding recruiting class, the hopes are justifiably high, but the road to an Ivy crown is never without potholes.

“I’m not ruling anyone out,” Delaney-Smith said. “Princeton beat us [last year]. I thought the entire league was young.”

The team Delaney-Smith found most threatening, ironically, is Brown, who placed last in the Ivies with a 2-12 league record.

“Everybody laughs when I tell them, but I thought Brown was the toughest team to play,” Delaney-Smith said. “But they just could not put the ball in the basket. They’re athletic, deep and they’ve got height.”

Harvard beat Brown by the scores of 63-51 and 76-63, as the Bears struggled on the scoreboard. Without the scoring prowess of Rada Pavichevich, ninth in Ivy scoring, Brown must look for new sources of offense.

“I think that’s probably the biggest mystery at Brown,” said Brown coach Jean Marie Burr. “We lost Rada—she’s playing in England now. The next spot is open.”

A potential candidate is Nyema Mitchell, whose skill as a shot blocker cannot overshadow her potential as a scorer. Mitchell scored 13 points against the Crimson in the first matchup. Also, with seven freshmen on the roster, there’s room for hungry rookies to step up.

Closer to the league pinnacle last year was Cornell, who was on the verge of an Ivy championship going into a matchup with Harvard, but a double-overtime 77-75 loss to the Crimson was the beginning of the end for those chances.

With a new coach, former Penn assistant coach Dayna Smith, at the helm, and three returning starters, the Big Red could still be a threat.

“They have the experience of almost winning,” Delaney-Smith said. “Though they statistically lost a lot to graduation, I think there’s enough there that they’re going to come back with ‘we almost won it last year’ pride.”

Plus, Cornell adds Megan Fannon, a 6’3 transfer student from Mercer. Fannon is one of three transfer students that stand out in their ability to impact the league, along with Columbia’s Sue Altman, who comes over from Holy Cross and the Crimson’s Moore, who played at Louisiana Tech.

The closest contender after Cornell last year was Penn, who won the Ivy title two years ago. The Quakers have shown eagerness literally from the very start of the season, when the players approached Penn coach Kelly Greenberg about having a practice at 12:01 a.m. on the first day the team could officially start.

“Actually, it was something our players really wanted to do because they were anxious to get started and have real practice,” Greenberg said. “It was a good night to initiate the freshman.”

The Quakers boast a whooping 11 returning players and four starters, including center Katie Kilker and All-Ivy guard Jewel Clark, who have impressed so far on the court. It’s early in the season, however, and the chance for the rest of the league to challenge Harvard is still months away.

“We try not to talk too much about the Ivy League,” Greenberg said. “Every one of them knows that Harvard is definitely the team to beat.”

—Staff writer Jessica T. Lee can be reached at lee45@fas.harvard.edu.