Crimson Women Aim to Claim Ivy Supremacy

Shopping week may have just ended, but the Harvard women’s basketball team already has two big tests fast approaching.

After acing its first assignment last weekend by snatching the league’s best record from Cornell in Ithaca, the Crimson (6-12, 4-1 Ivy) will look to maintain its place at the top of the Ivy class this weekend as Princeton—tied with Harvard atop the league standings—and Penn visit Lavietes Pavilion. Tipoff between the Crimson and Tigers is scheduled for tonight at 7 p.m., while the Penn tilt will be tomorrow at 6 p.m.

Tonight’s matchup with Princeton marks Harvard’s first game at home since December 21. And despite its winless record in Allston and its four hard-earned conference road wins, the Crimson is excited to be returning home.

“Hopefully it’ll just give us even more adrenaline,” junior guard Lindsay Hallion said. “It’s a great feeling to play where you’re comfortable, and it should give us that extra spark.”

But the team shouldn’t need additional inspiration for these two games. This weekend marks the halfway point of the Ivy season, and these three teams should all be in the running until league’s final games in early March. Tigers junior Meagan Cowher, the Ivy League’s scoring leader and daughter of former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Bill Cowher, leads the Ancient Eight’s highest-scoring team into Lavietes. The Tigers (10-9, 4-1) arrive with not only talent, but also experience, having finished second in the league last season.

But the Quakers (8-10, 3-2) are no slouches, either, and enter the weekend locked in a fourth-place tie with Dartmouth—a team that tested the Crimson to the endn before falling in both teams’ Ivy opener in Hanover January 6. Penn boasts two of the league’s most explosive scorers in seniors Monica Naltner and Joey Rhoads, who are contributing 17.5 and 17.4 points per game, respectively.

To keep its position at the top of the standings, the Crimson will have to maintain the fundamentally solid play that has fueled its win streak during its tough road trip. The Crimson has out-rebounded its opponent in each of its last six games, and last weekend held Columbia to just 36 points, the lowest scored by a Crimson opponent since 2001.

But only a complete, sixty-minute effort will allow it to emerge from the weekend with two wins.

“In every game, even the ones we’ve lost, we’ve had flashes of playing well,” Hallion said. “But success comes with being disciplined and putting a full game together. It’s not just defense, it’s not just offense—we have to put everything together.”

In the tonight’s game, all eyes will be on Cowher, who leads the Tigers in scoring (19.5 points per game), rebounding (7.5 rebounds per game) and field goal percentage (50.2 percent). Harvard head coach Kathy Delaney-Smith says that Harvard might only be able to contain Cowher, not completely stop her.

“Our focus will not be to stop Meagan Cowher—she’s going to get her double-figure points,” Delaney-Smith said. “Our focus is on Harvard. We have the ability to win games, and we just need to defense and take care of our game. That’s our focus.”

The Crimson has the offensive firepower to match Princeton and Penn’s explosiveness—its points scored are highest in the league behind the Tigers’. But to win each game, it will need to keep the turnovers down and the defense disciplined. If Harvard can accomplish those feats, it will enter the second half of the season with the league’s highest marks.

“This is for first place after the first round, and both Princeton and Penn are in the running,” Delaney-Smith said. “With great kids on both teams, it’ll be a dogfight.”