Late Triple Helps Women's Basketball Sink Columbia

Junior Shilpa Tummala drove with the ball into traffic. A swarm of Columbia players attacked. Co-captain Erin McDonnell was wide open.

She caught the ball about two feet behind the arc, squared to the hoop, and released.

It was nothing but net.

“I realized I was open and I was like, ‘Oh wow, I’m open,'” McDonnell said. “Shilpa drove because she always draws a lot of defenders…I started screaming and she heard me, and I was just lucky enough that it went in.”

The trey would put the Crimson (12-14, 5-7 Ivy) ahead, with the score at 82-81 with just under a minute to go, a lead the team would never relinquish. As the clock expired following a missed jumper by Lions’ sophomore Tori Oliver, the Harvard bench cleared with each member of the Crimson cheering in excitement.

With the level of intensity and heart shown by Harvard and Columbia (8-18, 2-10) in this game, one would expect there was a title or a playoff spot on the line, but that wasn’t the case. Though the game saw two sub-.500 Ivy teams facing off, the Crimson women didn’t take this game lightly.

“Our seniors have made a giant commitment and worked so hard for four years that this was a special night for them,” Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said. “It doesn’t matter who our opponent was I think they were just going to play hard.”

The Crimson was celebrating senior night—honoring the play of the team’s four members of the class of 2015. McDonnell, fellow co-captain Kaitlyn Dinkins, forward Temi Fagbenle, and guard Ali Curtis were playing their final game at Lavietes Pavilion, but they certainly made it count.

McDonnell finished the game with 15 points, her 23rd game this season she reached double figures. She shot 5-for-8 from the field, including 3-of-4 from behind the arc, but no shot was more important than that final three.

Fagbenle added 16 on the night to move to 15th on the all-time Crimson scoring list with 1,121 points. The senior got a standing ovation from the crowd when she fouled out of the game with just under two minutes to go in the contest.

In a scrappy game that was played with high intensity from the first whistle to the last, Dinkins was part of a strong defensive core, covering some of the Lions' hot shooters in the backcourt. She added two steals for Harvard in 20 minutes on the court.

Curtis saw limited action in her first game since returning from injury. The guard contributed three points and two assists in 11 minutes.

The last time the Crimson faced Columbia, Harvard fell by a score of 59-43. This time out, however, was a much different scenario, as the Crimson matched their total score from the first meeting in the first half alone.

“I am so proud of this team for how tough they played,” Delaney-Smith said. “I thought Columbia played far better than I thought they would. I think [there was a] 'Lets beat Harvard twice’ kind of mentality.”

Much of the difference came from the performance of the Harvard role players who stepped up on Saturday.

Coming off the bench, Tummala and junior guard Kit Metoyer, who had been starting with the recent absence of Curtis, added 15 and 10 points, respectively.

On the Lions' side, two rookie players stood out and carried their team to hold the lead for almost 28 minutes of play. Freshmen guard Alexa Giuliano lit up Lavietes during the first half, hitting five consecutive three-pointers. Giuliano holds the Columbia record for most threes in a season, and after hitting eight total on Saturday night, also claimed the record for most threes in a game. She had 24 points on the night. Classmate Camille Zimmerman added 25 points of her own.

“They set a lot of player screens for [Giuliano] and I think we were late for those switches so we made an adjustment for the guard to just get around it and be expecting that,” McDonnell said.

A distinct height advantage helped the Crimson dominate the paint through most of the night. Harvard outscored the Lions 36-26 in the paint with 21 second chance points on the night compared to Columbia’s 12. Fagbenle and junior AnnMarie Healy controlled the pace down low, with a combined 19 rebounds.

Healy also added a huge block during the Lion’s possession following McDonnell’s lead clinching three with just about thirty seconds to go to put the game in the Crimson’s hands, rather than it becoming a must-score situation that Harvard has found itself in on many occasions this season.

Though the team has had ups and downs, this game was an important one for the seniors that stepped on the floor at Lavietes Pavilion, and Delany-Smith wanted her players to channel that emotion in the game.

“[I told them to] have emotion,” Delany-Smith said. “Take some of the emotion and turn it into energy, and I think that’s what we saw and that’s what they did. I felt good that this team was going to find a way to win.”

—Staff writer Theresa C. Hebert can be reached at thebert@college.harvard.edu.