Women's Basketball Dominates Columbia to Close Season

The last time Harvard women’s basketball team held an opponent to 26 points, President Jimmy Carter was in office and the year was 1978.

Rescheduled due to last weekend’s winter storm, Tuesday night’s game served as the last of the regular season for both the Crimson (20-8, 11-3 Ivy) and Columbia (5-23, 3-11). Harvard’s 71-26 victory at Lavietes Pavilion also served as a tune-up for the WNIT, for which the Crimson clinched an automatic bid on Saturday night.

Harvard’s 45-point margin of victory was also the largest since a 94-47 win over Central Connecticut State on Dec. 3, 2003.

“Defensively, I was very pleased,” coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said. “I thought we stuck to the scouting report and that we had few breakdowns. That is the bottom line as far as I am concerned.”

Back to back three-point jumpers by sophomore forward Erin McDonnell were part of a 15-0 run in the middle of the first half that gave Harvard a 19-4 lead it would never relinquish. That stretch featured five straight steals by a stifling Crimson defense that tallied 14 steals on the night and forced 21 turnovers in all.

“Everything they try to do is generated by the drive,” Delaney-Smith said. “We switched all screens and played off of them to make them take threes, which they didn’t hit.”

Senior guard Elle Hagedorn had a team-high four steals as part of Harvard’s defensive effort. She also scored a season-high 10 points, all of them coming in the second half.

“[Coming into the game] I was excited yet sad that it was our last game at home,” Hagedorn said. “Throughout the game my teammates did a great job pressuring the ball and that just enabled me to read the passing lanes and come up with some steals.”

By mixing a half-court press zone with a tight man defense, the Crimson held the Lions to just 10 of 49 from the field for 20-percent shooting on the night. Columbia also struggled from the charity stripe, going just two for ten.

“[The half-court press] we run is really non-traditional, and I love it,” Delaney-Smith said. “Tonight was the best I had seen us play it in a long time. There are certain things you have to do, and if you mess up you give them wide-open lay-ups. We didn’t mess up much at all tonight; they took the passing lanes away the way they are supposed to and it was very effective.”

After a slow start to the game by both teams, junior guard Christine Clark sparked Harvard’s offense six minutes into the first half. After hitting a jumper, Clark saved an errant pass while flying into the second row. She then quickly rejoined the action to take a pass and drive hard to the basket, drawing a foul and hitting both free throws.

Clark, who went 5-6 from the field for 13 points, also had a personal 7-0 run that started with a fast-break lay-up with 14:55 left in the second half. A steal by junior guard Jasmine Evans led to another quick bucket for Clark, who then hit an open three on the next possession.

“Most of my points came off of great passes from my teammates,” Clark said. “Elle hit me for a great three, and Jasmine hit me for a break away lay-up. It was really a matter of hitting easy buckets that were set up by my teammates.”

Though she was held scoreless in the first half, senior forward Victoria Lippert had a strong second half and ended with a team-high 14 points and seven rebounds. With the Lions’ defense focusing on Lippert in the first half, Evans stepped up with eight points in just seven first-half minutes.

Although the Crimson shot well—49 percent from the field and 47 percent from deep—Delaney-Smith was not satisfied with Harvard’s offensive performance.

“I was a little disappointed with the turnovers and the decision-making on offense, as well as with our poise and fluidness,” Delaney-Smith said. “We seemed to not know what we were looking for; we missed some obvious looks. I don’t know why that keeps happening, but we shot really well despite that.”

While Delaney-Smith wasn’t pleased with the offense’s flow, Clark thinks the team’s strong defense was key to finishing the season undefeated at home.

“At halftime, we said that we had to come out and play hard,” Clark said. “[The second half] was more about really making our team better than who we were playing against… We just did a great job on defense all night and that led into our offense.”