Win Over Columbia Propels W. Hoops to Ivy Weekend Sweep

Don’t blame Columbia for running into a buzzsaw Friday night.

Six days after a heartbreaking loss to Yale put a major damper on the Harvard women’s basketball team’s chances of winning the Ivy League this year, the Crimson unleashed an attack on Friday that might have given WNBA teams fits.

Instead, Columbia (10-12, 4-6 Ivy) was the unfortunate opponent, and the Crimson (12-10, 5-4) served up an 85-44 beating to the lowly Lions at Lavietes Pavilion.

“We want to finish the season strong,” Harvard junior center Reka Cserny said, “and show everyone who the best team is in the league.”

The Crimson—who pulled into fourth place behind Penn, Dartmouth and Brown with the win—sure looked it. Harvard crashed the boards, made crisp passes, played stifling defense, ran the floor, used speed and size and burned the Lions up and down the lineup—even before Columbia coach Jay Butler pulled his starters three minutes into the first half.

“I thought we played our best team defense tonight,” Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said.

Most of all, Harvard shot the lights out. The Crimson scored points on layups, on threes, at mid-range, at long-range, in the paint, off turnovers, off fast breaks and on cuts through the lane and to the basket.

Overall, the Crimson shot 58.3 percent from the floor—including 50 percent behind the arc on 11-of-22 three pointers—and four players scored in double figures.

“I think it was really frustrating for Columbia,” said Cserny, who torched the Lions for 20 points on 8-9 shooting, “because they just didn’t know who to cover. Everyone took a three, and almost everyone made it. That’s really tough to defense.”

The game was out of hand not long after tip-off. Harvard senior point guard Bev Moore scored the game’s first points on a three-pointer, six seconds into the game.

That set up a blistering first 4:42, when the Crimson would hit 5-of-6 from behind the arc—all part of a 29-5 run that gave the Crimson a 32-10 lead with 10:46 still left to be played in the first half.

“We just didn’t miss in the first 10 minutes,” Cserny said.

Harvard led 48-21 at halftime but, despite Delaney-Smith’s decision to sit the starting lineup for a good part of the second half and play the younger players, the lead kept growing.

A layup by junior Rochelle Bell with 4:38 left in the game gave Harvard an 81-36 lead—its biggest lead of the night—and the Crimson rolled the rest of the way from there.

Harvard’s long-range success was a pleasant turnaround for a traditionally hot-shooting squad—a team which, this year, has seen its three-point attempts total rise and success rate plummet. Delaney-Smith said that the Crimson has been trying to better its team balance in recent weeks.

“You know, people say, ‘Oh, we overuse the three,’” Delaney-Smith said. “Well, we overuse everything. We overuse the three. We overuse the long-bomb-look-for-the-breakaway. We overuse [co-captain Hana Peljto] and Reka. You know what I mean? And so, my message to this team…is balance.”

“The long bomb’s good,” she added. “The three is good. Hana and Reka are good. But it’s not the be-all and end-all.”

Indeed, the team used its strengths to an extreme Friday night. Peljto and Cserny combined for 40 points, and more than a third of the team’s points were off three-pointers.

But the 22 three-point attempts were a far cry from the 30 launched in a loss to Quinnipiac earlier this season, and several players—including Bell, whose 14 points were a career-high, and sophomore Kate Mannering, who was 3-of-3 from the field—made key contributions off the bench.

One thing the Crimson overused to its benefit was defense. Harvard held Columbia to a sickly 22.8 percent from the field, and just 1-18 from three-point range.

Delaney-Smith said she was especially happy the big lead helped her get playing time for her two freshmen—guard Kyle Dalton and forward Christiana Lackner—whom she calls “one of the strongest classes I’ve ever had.”

“Kyle was on every rebound. She was in every play. That’s unbelievable for a kid who never gets to play,” Delaney-Smith said. “Christiana had the best rotation and had defense.”

Overall, the second half was a nice preview of next year’s squad, who will feel the gaps left by three starters—co-captain Tricia Tubridy, Peljto and Moore.

But with first-place Penn hitting a rough spot Friday—the Quakers lost to Brown 85-75—the Crimson may again find itself in the thick of things. Cserny, for one, isn’t ready to start thinking about next winter just yet.

“Next year is still far away,” she said.

—Staff writer Alex McPhillips can be reached at rmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.