'BAMA SLAMMA: Harvard Has Law Of Averages as Ally

That quintessentially laissez-faire website, wikipedia.com, has done it again.

Recently, I looked up “the law of averages” and got, more or less, what I expected: “...the view that eventually, everything ‘evens out.’”

Then I thought about Harvard women’s hoops, which blew a potentially huge chance to close in on Ivy leader Dartmouth by losing to Brown, 78-63, on Friday night.

My scientific intuition tells me the Crimson will be okay.

Here’s why: Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith has won 207 Ivy League games in her Harvard career, more than any coach ever. She’s fiery, and she didn’t win those games by accident.

On Saturday night, her team didn’t look like it had dropped two games in the standings.

Harvard rolled up its sleeves, dusted its jeans, and taught Yale a 90-55 lesson.

Junior Maureen McCaffery scored 14 points for the Crimson. Before leaving to sign autographs for local schoolchildren, she wore a smile about as wide as the margin of victory—which, by the way, was the largest in the series’ 57-game history.

“You can’t sulk,” she said. “You have to be ready to play the next game.”

In the end, success is almost invariably taken for granted.

After all, the 2004-05 installment of Harvard women’s hoops—an outfit that boasts five of the previous nine Ivy titles—was, at this point, supposed to be mired in a rebuilding slog.

After graduating one of the Ivies’ most dominant scorers of the past decade, the incomparable Hana Peljto ’04, the Crimson was not highly favored to win the title for the first time in recent years.

That distinction, instead, went to Dartmouth.

Funny, those preseason predictions.

After taking care of Brown on Saturday, Dartmouth jumped to a healthy two-game lead over Harvard and the Bears and into the Ivy League drivers’ seat.

Underneath the façade of stock predictions and banal results, however, lurks an interesting subplot:

Harvard is better than Dartmouth.

Which brings me back to the law of averages.

“Dartmouth has had a lot of close ballgames,” Delaney-Smith said. “A lot of teams have played them closer than they’ve played us.

“But you don’t want to get into that game.”

That game—by which Delaney-Smith means “the numbers game”—can be deceptive in measuring a team’s value.

It can also be useful. And Harvard’s 71.05 points per game scoring average—and the 8.1 points per game by which it outscores opponents—are easily the best in the Ivy League.

Dartmouth, by comparison, barely outscored its competitors heading into the weekend. Blowout wins against Yale and Brown helped the Big Green’s scoring differential—it rose to plus-2.12 from plus-0.3—but did not bring it within range of Harvard’s number.

Meanwhile, the Crimson maintained Ivy leads in scoring, passing, shooting, and just about every turnover ratio metric in existence.

Dartmouth improved upon its numbers, but does not lead the Ivies in any significant team category.

So when should the law of averages kick in? Hell if I know.

But if you believe that stat sheet, then you must audaciously believe that Harvard embraces a sliver of a chance.

And with seven games remaining this season—a full half of the Ivy slate—including rematches against all seven of Harvard’s Ancient Eight competitors, there remains plenty of time for the Crimson to do the bidding of higher forces—like, say, the law of averages.

Most importantly, a relatively unimpressive Dartmouth squad has plenty of time to slip up.

“I want total control of our destiny,” Delaney-Smith said. “That’s all I want. I don’t want to have to have someone else beat someone else.

“We need to take care of our business every game.”

For a coach and her team, that strategy can be useful in keeping a positive frame of mind.

In reality, the best one might hope is that Harvard keeps doing what it has done so far.

The rest, of course, is fate.

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