SIDEBAR: History Repeats Itself in Opening Loss

If the Dartmouth women’s basketball team is trying to take its Ivy League title back, it’s following the defending champions’ model to a T.

A Big Green team with just two wins to its name stormed into Lavietes Pavilion Saturday night and, with the Crimson’s 2007 Ivy League championship banner hanging in the rafters, beat the team to beat in 2008. With a 52-47 victory over Harvard, Dartmouth showed that the Ancient Eight title is up for grabs.

“To win in the Ivy League, you need to put together a 40-minute game,” said junior forward Katie Rollins, who had 18 points to lead all scorers. “Any Ivy team can come out any night and have an amazing night or, like us, a not-so-amazing night.”

Just as events unfolded last year in this meeting, the defending champions and the inexperienced underdogs seemed to switch roles for the evening.

What turned out well for Harvard last year—and what it should be concerned about this year—is that the change wasn’t just for a night in 2007. Last year, the Crimson used a come-from-behind victory over the Big Green to begin a run to 13 league victories and the Ivy championship, with a loss at Yale as its only speed bump. On its title run, Harvard used a deadly combination of youth and experience—a trio of stellar sophomores with junior Lindsay Hallion running the point and senior Christiana Lackner dominating the boards—to power a high-scoring offense. While youth was often a blessing, it was sometimes a curse—the Crimson’s young starters could be prone to forcing the flashy play, shooting too early in the shot clock, and committing turnovers.

But a year later, Harvard is that much older and wiser. Inexperience has become a feeble excuse.

“Some veterans made some mistakes,” coach Delaney-Smith said. “That’s too bad. I’d let the young kids make the mistakes, but it’s disappointing when the veterans do.”

On Saturday night, Harvard won the opening tip and took the lead on a Hallion jumper—the co-captain’s only basket of the game—just 10 seconds later. For the rest of the first half, though, it couldn’t buy a basket: the Crimson shot just 8-for-29 from the floor before halftime. On its worst possessions, Harvard didn’t even manage a shot—the Big Green was off and running with a takeaway.

More puzzling, though, were Harvard’s defensive miscues, which came not only in an error-prone opening half but down the stretch as well.

“There were a few defensive errors and we didn’t make corrections,” junior guard Emily Tay said. “We sat back on our heels and let them run their offense.”

Delaney-Smith seemed to believe that the necessary adjustments were mental as much as physical.

“The whole team was responding to the fact that Lindsay [Hallion] was missing shots that she normally makes,” Delaney-Smith added. “We let it get into our heads, and that’s a shame because we have so many people that can step up.”

The latent veteran instinct kicked in for the Crimson after halftime, when the defensive intensity increased to the tune of an 18-percent decrease in the Big Green’s field-goal percentage.

Harvard has to hope it can turn that glint of veteran experience into a sustained effort, and fast. After a three-week break, it faces Dartmouth again, this time in Hanover.

“[The next game] is about proving that we can play better than we played tonight,” Rollins said. “We’ve worked so hard for the past year, and we’re not going to let them take the championship away from us so easily.”

—Staff writer Emily W. Cunningham can be reached at ecunning@fas.harvard.