Women's Basketball Ends Season with Loss to Drexel

Senior forward Victoria Lippert knocked down a triple from the right wing and pumped her fist as the Harvard women’s basketball team cut Drexel’s lead to 12 with 13 minutes remaining in the game.

But Dragons forward Taylor Wootton brought it down the court and dished the ball out to guard Hollie Mershon, who caught the ball behind the arc and sunk her own three in response. It was that kind of Saturday night for the Crimson, who couldn’t seem to get enough defensive power to stop a rolling Drexel team determined not to end its postseason.

At the Daskalakis Athletic Center, it was the Dragons’ guards running the show as Drexel (24-10) controlled the offensive glass to best Lippert and company and end Harvard’s (21-9) postseason run with a 82-72 win.

“Coming out from the beginning, we knew that they were a three-point team, that they were going to come out firing,” sophomore guard Ali Curtis said. “We knew they were going to come out, so we had to step up our defensive intensity, and I think we fought throughout the whole game, we just weren’t able to pull it out in the end.”

Throughout the game, the Crimson used multiple defensive looks, from two-one-two zones to full-court presses, but Drexel players seemed to box out taller Harvard players when shots wouldn’t fall to grab the ball and a fresh shot clock.

“They were running [an offense that] we’ve never seen before, and it’s very different from what most teams run, so we thought we would try different things on them,” coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said. “I thought that took away their rhythm. But when you get an offensive board and you can kick it out and get an extra pass, that’s their rhythm—they love that rhythm.”

For the first time since a win at home against Princeton, Harvard was outrebounded by its opponents. Drexel pulled down 32 boards compared to the Crimson’s 22, with nearly half of those coming from the offensive glass.

“There was one possession where we must have played two to three straight minutes of defense because they got five or six offensive boards, and then they kick it out and make you play defense for 30 seconds—that’s how they play,” Delaney-Smith said. “I don’t believe they rebounded well all year, and I’m sure that was an emphasis for them because we have a height advantage and we should have rebounded better.”

A left hook-shot by sophomore forward Temi Fagbenle gave Harvard the first points of the second half to cut the Drexel lead to four, but then the Dragons started marching. Rookie guard Megan Creighton came back with a trey of her own, and Wootton tossed in two consecutive jumpers to extend the lead to 12.

The Crimson struggled to diminish the advantage after that, as threes from Curtis and Fagbenle that cut the lead to six, the closest Harvard would get in the second half, were answered immediately.

“They shot the lights out, and they had the home-court advantage, so for a shooting team, that’s a pretty good advantage for them,” Delaney-Smith said. “They shot incredibly well. It was amazing how many shots were at the buzzer or at the 30-second clock. That’s what they do well—we knew that. They use screens well, and that’s their whole game, is looking to the three.”

The Crimson shot out to an early advantage in the first half, leading by as much as five, but Drexel overcame its slow start quickly, responding with a 5-0 run fueled solely by Mershon to tie the game.

“They wanted to slow the tempo of the game and use almost the whole shot clock to score the ball, and that isn’t our way of playing—we like to push the tempo and get easy buckets in transition,” Curtis said. “We came out firing and I thought that helped us in the beginning and towards the end, I don’t know if we pushed the ball as much as we should have.”

Harvard kept pace with the Dragons throughout much of the first half, exchanging leads with the home team multiple times. But with Mershon benched for foul trouble late in the first half, the Dragons found a new offensive weapon in freshman guard Rachel Pearson, who shot back-to-back threes to give Drexel a six-point lead heading into the half.

Mershon eclipsed her career high, finishing the game with 32 points to lead the Dragons offensively, while Lippert and Clark chipped in 15 points apiece for Harvard. Fagbenle, the Ivy League Rookie of the Year, and senior guard Elle Hagedorn notched 14 and 10 points, respectively, to join their teammates in double figures.

—Staff writer Samantha Lin can be reached at samanthalin@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @linsamnity.