Women's Basketball Starts Season Against Colgate

Preseason is almost over, jump shots and free throws have been perfected, and set pieces have been practiced rigorously. The Harvard women’s basketball team is ready to play ball.

For the returning players, this Saturday will represent their first chance to demonstrate how much they have improved since last year. For the new players, it is a dream finally being realized.

“Our expectation is to achieve excellence in every practice and every game,” co-captain Kaitlyn Dinkins said. “This means pushing each other in practice and maintaining a championship level of discipline in everything we do. We have a challenging nonconference schedule which will prepare us for winning an Ivy League championship.”

The team will face Colgate in its season opener at Lavietes Pavilion. Harvard looks to build on last year’s successful season, where it reached the second round of the WNIT before falling to Rutgers, 63-52.

“We’ve definitely grown in our own personal accountability and taking practice to the next level, which helps us in games,” Dinkins said. “Every day in practice is all-out competition.”

Not only are both teams seeking to start off their seasons on the right foot, but they also have the pressure that comes with a sibling rivalry. Saturday’s game will be the second time that Harvard senior point guard Ali Curtis and her younger sister Katie, Colgate’s sophomore guard, face off.

Last year, the elder sister’s team was the victor, so the younger will now have her chance for revenge.

“There is definitely some smack talk between those two point guards,” co-captain Erin McDonnell said.

The two teams have a short history, with last year representing their first meeting since the 2005-2006 season. The Crimson previously captured both meetings in 2001 and 2002, and it will look to keep the streak alive on Saturday.

When the two squads faced off last season, Harvard’s Christine Clark ’14 and Colgate’s Lauryn Kobiela dominated the game with 21 and 27 points, respectively. Clark’s efforts helped the Crimson take the lead early in the game. Though the Raiders were able to trim the deficit multiple times, the Crimson held onto its lead for the entire game before emerging victorious, 91-76, in Hamilton, N.Y.

With the win last season over Colgate, Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith joined the group of 28 other active Division I coaches with 500 or more career wins.

“We don’t look in terms of what we want to improve on, because we have a different team, different personnel,” Delaney-Smith said. “I think we’re going to look a lot different.”

That difference will come from losing four players, including its top scorer for the past few years in Clark. The recent graduate, who now plays professionally overseas, is the fourth highest all-time Harvard scorer.

“We lost great seniors who were threats offensively and defensively,” McDonnell said. “Having said that, this presents opportunities for our underclassmen to step up and contribute.”

The Crimson enters the season with four new freshmen: center Anna Lachenauer, point guard Kirby Porter, forward Maddy Tessier-Kay, and forward Cameron Nieters.

“The freshmen have transitioned extremely well into our system because of their high court IQ,” McDonnell said. “They add a lot of size and athleticism to our team, and we are confident in their hard work this past preseason.”

“I think we have great height, so we want to be a consistently dominant rebounding team,” Delaney-Smith added.

Colgate has also lost three of its most valuable players to graduation, most notably Kobiela, who led the team with assists with 131 last season.

Though this matchup will not have implications for the Ivy title, it will give the squad its first shot at working out any kinks in Delaney-Smith’s system.

“We’re really focusing on our team tightening up or defense and focusing on things we need to work on,” Dinkins said. “We’ll go over some of their stuff, but it’s really about us.”