Women's Basketball Edges Penn in Close Contest

With one minute remaining at the Palestra on Saturday night, the Harvard women’s basketball team was in a 50-50 dead heat with Penn and at risk of losing its fourth game in five contests.

Fortunately, the team had junior wing Victoria Lippert.

Catching the ball at the top of the key, Lippert faced up, noticed the defense was playing off of her, and knocked down a three-pointer to give Harvard the lead. The teams then traded baskets in a frenetic final minute, but two free throws by sophomore Christine Clark eventually sealed a 57-53 victory for the Crimson.

“Victoria is a great 3-point, and…I’ve been trying to encourage her to take the open three more often,” Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said. “She’s been hitting big shots during her whole career.”

On the night, Lippert led Harvard with 17 points. Junior Emma Golen netted 13 and Clark added 11.

The Crimson (14-11, 7-4 Ivy) and the Quakers (11-14, 4-7) battled back and forth in the first half with neither team establishing more than a five-point lead. At halftime, Penn led, 31-28, after shooting 7 of 13 from deep in the first period. According to Delaney-Smith, the Quakers took advantage of the extra guard they had on the court to spread the floor and get open three-point shots. In the second half, Harvard adjusted by playing a smaller lineup which held Penn to one of eight from behind the arc in the second half.

While the Quakers cooled down from three in the second period, the competition stayed extremely tight, though Harvard didn’t trail in the final 19 minutes of the game.

With nine minutes remaining, the Crimson opened up a seven-point advantage when junior Victoria Lippert converted an and-one opportunity to cap a 7-0 run. Penn answered right back with six unanswered points of its own on two conventional three-point plays, closing the gap to 44-43.

“We ended up getting beaten on the drive on two back-to-back three-point plays,” Delaney-Smith said. “That’s just unfortunate. With a team like Penn in the middle of the pack, they are not playing for anything but pride. Now they have a put-your-head-down-and-go-to-the-hole kind of mentality.”

To stop the rally, Golen got to the line and sank a free throw before knocking down a three-pointer on the following possession. The Quakers rallied again though to knot the game at 48 going into the final media timeout with three minutes remaining. Two baskets later, the contest was tied at 50.

And that’s when Lippert sank a three-pointer to break the game’s final tie.

“The play had broken down, and she just saw that the defender was giving her too much space,” co-captain Brogan Berry said. “We all had confidence in her. That shot gave us the spark we needed in the last minute and half.”

Berry extended the lead to four with a layup after Penn went one for two from the stripe on its end of the floor. A Quaker layup narrowed the difference to two, but sophomore Christine Clark made two free throws to put the game out of reach, sealing the 57-53 victory.

“We were completely confident in [Clark], 100 percent,” Berry said. “Towards the end of the game, she always hits those shots. I had no doubt she was going to sink those last two free throws.”

In the losing effort, Quaker sophomore Alyssa Baron led Penn with 20 points in the game. It was Baron’s third straight 20-point performance.

“She’s the kind of player you can’t stop from scoring,” Delaney-Smith said. “I thought we did a good job on her. She got some layups I wasn’t happy about, but for the most part we threw some defense at her that made her as uncomfortable as we could. I thought we stuck to our game plan against her.”

Harvard also had a tough time maintaining possession of the basketball on Saturday. A night after committing 24 turnovers, the team lost the ball 16 times against Penn.

“We are a kind of team that puts too much pressure on ourselves, and when we do that, we turn the ball over,” Delaney-Smith said. “I think this team has great potential, and I think the one area we have to continue getting better at is to stop putting so much pressure on ourselves.”

And despite having a larger team on the court for much of the game, the Crimson surrendered 16 offensive rebounds and only corralled four more total rebounds than the guard-oriented Quakers.

Still, the team played well enough to secure the victory and stay in the chase for second place in the Ivy League. Both Harvard and Yale went 1-1 on the weekend, meaning the Bulldogs are still a half game ahead in the league standings. If both teams were to win their remaining games, they would finish tied behind Princeton.

—Staff writer Jacob D. H. Feldman can be reached at jacobfeldman@college.harvard.edu.