W. Basketball Takes Road Win Over Pesky Big Red Squad

Cornell learned early on about the hot streak Harvard women’s basketball captain Reka Cserny has been riding since the beginning of Ivy League play. In January, the 6’3 Crimson center torched the Big Red for 30 points and 10 rebounds at Lavietes Pavilion.

On Saturday night, a second meeting with Cserny proved similarly frustrating for the lowly Big Red (2-21, 0-10 Ivy). Cserny lit up Cornell for 22 points—including 15 on 6-of-6 shooting in the first half—en route to a 70-60 road victory for Harvard (15-7, 7-2). She complemented the scoring output with six rebounds, four assists, and two steals.

“Cornell didn’t have any posts, so we tried to go inside a lot,” Cserny said. “Whoever was on the court in their forward position, we were confident we could shoot over them.”

Cserny propelled the Crimson to a weekend sweep of its New York rivals, averaging 24 points over the two games and raising her league-leading scoring average to 20.7 points per game in Ivy play.

“She has had a positively outstanding month,” said Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith. “Everything about her game has indicated that she doesn’t get bothered by the physical game.”

Cserny aside, defense had been Harvard’s staple over a 6-1 Ivy run in the last three weeks, and the Crimson lived up to its billing with 20 steals on 30 Big Red turnovers.

Against Cornell, guards Jess Holsey and Katie Murphy combined for half of those, each finishing the evening with five steals. Since last weekend’s loss to Brown, Harvard has recorded 50 steals in three consecutive victories.

On the road at Cornell, the Crimson generated nearly half its offense from the defensive end, pouring in 30 points off of Big Red turnovers.

“We are not really going for steals, but our guards are working really hard to force their guards into soft passes,” Cserny said. “We pressure the ball a lot in a half court set and help from the weak side, so we know if we get beaten, somebody else is there to help or get the steal.”

On Saturday night, the Big Red found Harvard’s interior offense to be nearly as tenacious as its defensive effort.

That unit dominated from the outset, outscoring Cornell 38-20 in the paint and controlling the offensive glass. The Crimson edged the Big Red 35-31 on the boards, but Harvard pulled down 17 offensive rebounds—nearly half its total—to Cornell’s nine.

“Our emphasis in the past couple of weeks [has been] to go to the glass and anticipate when our teammates are going to shoot,” Cserny said. “That’s given us some second-chance points.”

Harvard’s effort on the glass resulted in 15 second-chance points for the Crimson, which overcame a poor shooting performance in the second half with hustle on both ends of the court.

Junior forward Kate Mannering pulled down six rebounds—four offensive—to go along with 14 points.

“We have had a couple of games when our shooting wasn’t as good as we want it to be,” Cserny said, “so we know we have to work hard on the glass to get second efforts.”

The Crimson got another valuable performance from junior forward Maureen McCaffery, who finished with 11 points and five rebounds off the bench. McCaffery has scored in double-digits in three of the last four games.

With the win and Brown’s unexpected Saturday loss to Princeton, Harvard regains sole possession of second place in the Ivy League standings. Road contests at Yale and Brown this weekend give the Crimson an opportunity to close in on league-leading Dartmouth (13-8, 9-0) and to avenge a lopsided home loss to Brown two weekends ago.

“We know Dartmouth needs to lose one before we play them, but we’re trying to focus on our game,” Cserny said. “In the second half of the Ivy schedule, we know what the other teams are playing. They know what we’re playing, so we have to focus on each game.”

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