Young Harvard Faces Rival

Three seasons ago, a spry collection of freshmen and sophomores from Dartmouth faced a frightening first assignment in the Ivy League: Beat Harvard at Harvard.

The very green Big Green hobbled into Lavietes with a losing record in non-conference play.

The Crimson had forged a dynasty, winning 26 straight games against Ivy opponents over nearly three seasons, and returned its entire championship lineup from the previous year.

For Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, it all sounds so awfully familiar.

“They were us four years ago,” she says. “That’s why they are who they are [now].”

Long before Dartmouth became the league’s most successful veteran squad, it featured one of the league’s most tantalizing collections of unproven talent.

Unproven, that is, until sophomore Angie Soriaga put the Big Green in overtime with a buzzer-beating three, where Dartmouth shocked the Crimson, 93-88, in front of a hostile Cambridge crowd.

All but two players remain from the 2003-04 Big Green, including the team’s three top scorers from that game. With the exception of Elise Morrison, who will miss the rest of the season with a torn ligament in her foot, Dartmouth (7-3) returns its entire starting lineup from last year.

Now Harvard (4-9), which shared the championship with the Big Green last year, will take the role of the inexperienced squad, plagued by key injuries and rookie mistakes against non-conference foes and entering tomorrow’s reprisal of the rivalry as the consensus underdog.

Joining leading scorer Laura Robinson as the Crimson’s most dangerous recent offensive threats are freshman Emily Tay (7.8 ppg, 2.92 apg), an emerging prototype point guard with superior passing and slashing skills (as well as a team-leading 50 turnovers) and Lindsay Hallion (6.7 ppg), a sophomore guard who missed 2004-05 with a knee injury.

Freshman forward Katie Rollins returned from her own recent injury woes to help Harvard with 10 points against Colgate on Monday, and 6’7 freshman Emma Moretzsohn, the Ivies’ tallest player, keyed 22 points in a loss to Big East opponent Providence on Dec. 21.

Delaney-Smith’s hand has been forced to give the underclassmen big minutes due to a combination of team underperformance and, more damningly, a spate of crushing injuries.

Co-captain Jessica Holsey has missed action with a broken hand since Dec. 7. Her cast has been removed, and she has returned to practice, but Delaney-Smith maintains that Holsey’s status will remain day-to-day. She was mum on whether Holsey would play tomorrow evening.

“You never make up for experience,” Delaney-Smith says. “It’s clearly a young team versus an experienced team. We know that. We’ve made mistakes, but we’ve grown. We feel good going into this.”

Harvard currently rides a two-game win streak, thanks to a convincing victory against Colgate that followed a win over Binghamton, one of the nation’s best offensive teams. Those efforts concluded the holidays with a positive spin after the team had lost eight in a row, the Crimson’s worst such streak since 1983-84. Harvard has finally begun to hit its stride.

“We have some momentum heading in to Dartmouth,” co-captain Maureen McCaffery said on Monday after the Colgate victory. “Two wins in a row after a long time feels awesome. Everything is kind of coming together at the right time, so it is exciting.”

The Big Green, on the other hand, features the same kind of talent and savvy that the Crimson boasted in early 2004.

Senior Jeannie Cullen (15 ppg) leads a trio of high-scoring perimeter threats, which includes classmate Soriaga (12.2 ppg) and junior Ashley Taylor (12.2 ppg).

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