GAME OF THE YEAR, RUNNER-UP: Women's Basketball 70, Dartmouth 67

Everything about the Harvard-Dartmouth showdown on March 8 seemed scripted.

The Ivy League’s No. 1 and No. 2 teams met at Lavietes Pavilion in the league’s final regular-season game, with the Crimson needing a win to share the title. Dartmouth had defeated Harvard in a 73-70 overtime thriller in Hanover Jan. 8. Both teams had been near perfect in the second half of the season. A raucous home crowd, near 2,000 strong, shook the Pavilion for 40 minutes.

“This was a game you dream about,” captain Reka Cserny said. “All the circumstances were there. It was for the championship and we had to win. Everything was in place and it was just perfect.”

In January, the Crimson stared at a 46-27 deficit with 13:34 to go, but clawed back to send the game to overtime before eventually falling.

The March contest began much the same way. With 10:45 remaining, Harvard trailed the Big Green 51-36, the deficit due largely to the Crimson’s abysmal first-half shooting (21.6 percent).

Junior Maureen McCaffery sparked a Harvard comeback with three huge second half three-pointers.

“[McCaffery] is always an emotional leader on our team,” senior Katie Murphy said. “She really turned her leadership into a tangible performance on the court and give our team the boost it needed to come back.”

McCaffery’s final bucket—a dagger from the free throw line to cut the margin to 53-50—gave her 16 points on the night and 13 in the second half. The crowd, which had grown louder with every point the Crimson scored, screamed itself hoarse after the jumper. Her heroics set the stage for Cserny. Fighting for at least one more game in an already stellar career, she took over the final minutes of the second half.

In her last game at Lavietes, she scored 11 of Harvard’s final 17 points and capped off the performance with a three-point play to give the Crimson a 65-57 lead. The comeback ended with a stunning 70-67 Crimson victory that gave the Crimson a share of the Ivy League title.

“That was the best crowd I’ve ever played in front of at Harvard,” Murphy said. “We were able to win the Ivy championship at home in the last game of my career.”

The script came with a perfect ending.

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