Turnovers Spell Crimson's Demise

The shot selection was great, the shooting percentage was better, and the Harvard women’s basketball team owned nearly every statistical category—but a fatal case of butterfingers soured the Crimson’s upset bid at Brown on Friday night.

Harvard (8-13, 4-4 Ivy) could only watch as Brown (14-8, 8-1 Ivy) poured in 30 points off 24 turnovers—19 in the second half—en route to a 66-61 comeback win in the final seven minutes. It was the second time a victory over the Bears eluded the Crimson in the final ticks. Last month, a last-second buzzer beater propelled Brown to a near-identical 64-62 victory at Laivetes Pavilion.

But while the outcome was the same on Friday, the action leading up to it was entirely different. Harvard trailed almost all night, making a furious charge in the waning minutes to put the pressure on the Bears.

This time, it was the Crimson that dominated for much of the second half, sprinting to an 11-point lead with 6:47 remaining.

Then Brown played the role of spoiler, finishing the night on a 22-6 run and forcing five crucial Harvard turnovers down the stretch.

“It was probably one of the most frustrating games in the history of the world,” sophomore guard Lindsay Hallion said. “I almost feel like Friday night’s game hurt worse than the buzzer beater because we were playing so well until the end.”

In its most complete offensive performance of the year, Harvard shot 52 percent from the floor and 50 percent from beyond the arc while holding the Bears to just 20-of-59 shooting (34 percent). In a see-saw first half, the Crimson took its biggest lead of the half at 25-20 on a Hallion jumper with 5:46 remaining.

The game of short runs continued after the break, when Brown turned a 32-30 halftime advantage into a 40-32 lead with four consecutive layups to open the half. With star guard Sarah Hayes in foul trouble for much of the night, the Bears turned to their role players for offensive production and did so with great success.

“We got her in some foul trouble early, but she made a big shot at the end of the game,” Hallion said of Hayes. “We know that she’s good, but some other players made some big shots that were much more back-breaking.”

The Crimson continued its hot shooting to erase the margin, using a 16-0 run over five minutes to turn a 44-39 deficit into a 55-44 lead.

The run was perhaps Harvard’s finest offensive stretch of the season, and it was sustained by a trio of rookies. Freshman Niki Finelli poured in eight points on two three-pointers and a layup, and added an assist. Freshman forward Katie Rollins added four more points over the stretch and guard Emily Tay sank a jumper. Fourteen of Harvard’s 16 unanswered points came from its freshman class.

“It felt like everything was just clicking,” Rollins said. “I think we got in the mind frame of just attack, attack, attack. We were really loose, started to push the ball up the court, and Niki Finelli hit some huge shots.”

But the Crimson’s offensive firepower proved incapable of lasting 40 minutes, as Brown tied the score at 59 on Megan McCahill’s three-pointer with 2:27 left.

“We made way too many errors and had too many turnovers—stuff that we don’t usually do,” junior forward Christiana Lackner said. “But for some reason they all came out in that game. We’re up by 10 with not that much time left and all we have to do is hang on to it, and we didn’t.”

Hallion’s layup with eight seconds left was the Crimson’s only basket in the final two minutes. Hallion finished with 11 points, Rollins had 10, and Finelli scored a career-high 16.

“At the end, I felt like we just handed them that game,” Lackner said.

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