Women's Basketball Drops Third in a Row

BOSTON—It was another road game, another disastrous first half, and another unsuccessful game of catch-up for the Harvard women’s basketball team last night against Northeastern.

The Crimson mustered just 20 points in the opening frame against its river rival and struggled to a 72-60 loss to the Huskies—Harvard’s third consecutive defeat in the series.

Six games into the young season, the Crimson has shown itself to be quite the offensive force in the second half. Basketball games are 40 minutes long, however, and Harvard has yet to put together a dominant first 20 this season.

“To come in against a Boston rivalry and play like the way we did, I have no answer for that,” Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said. “You can ask [the players.] They might have an answer. I have no answer.”

The Huskies began the game on a 9-0 run and maintained a double-digit lead almost all night. A forbidding cocktail of abysmal defensive rebounding, hurried shot selection, and untimely turnovers ruined the Crimson’s opening frame.

In the absence of injured co-captain Jessica Holsey, Harvard committed 10 first-half turnovers—which resulted in 14 points—and shot just 34.6 percent from the field in the first 20 minutes. Worse still was that Northeastern grabbed 22 rebounds to Harvard’s 11 in the opening frame—and the Huskies’ nine boards on the offensive glass alone nearly matched the Crimson’s first half total on both ends of the floor.

“In the first half, [rebounding] was absolutely horrible,” Delaney-Smith said. “And that’s all we talked about for three months. So talk is cheap.”

Harvard went into the locker room down 36-20, a familiar if foreboding feeling for a team that has trailed at the break in all six contests this year. Over those six games, the Crimson has scored just 138 points in the first half and 226 in the second.

“We don’t know if it’s a mental thing,” said sophomore guard Lindsay Hallion of Harvard’s first half woes. “It’s something we’re desperately trying to work on. The second half—that’s who we are.”

The Crimson came out hot in the second half, outscoring Northeastern 40-36 and pulling within nine three times in the last 15 minutes. Harvard shot 44 percent from the field and 36 percent from the arc in the second half, and senior guard Laura Robinson netted 12 of her 14 points after the break. Freshman Emily Tay tallied all nine of her points in the second frame, including a big three-pointer in her first possession.

It was the same too little, too late refrain for Harvard, though, as the Crimson could never keep Northeastern off the glass or out of the paint in either half.

Each time Harvard chipped away at the Huskies’ lead, Northeastern would counter with an offensive rebound and a gritty put back. When the Crimson was late getting back on defense, the Huskies found gaps on the low block and the baseline for open jump shots and layups. Forward Quiana Copeland decimated the Harvard defense all night, amassing 22 points and 15 rebounds against the Crimson frontcourt.

“We couldn’t really put together anything,” Hallion said. “We had spurts of really great things in the second half, but you can’t not come out in the beginning of the first half and then have that many breakdowns.”

—Staff writer Aidan E. Tait can be reached at atait@fas.harvard.edu.