Women's Basketball Completes Historic Comeback Against Yale, Holds Off Brown

Coming off a weekend that saw the Harvard women’s basketball team drop consecutive contests to Penn and Princeton, the Crimson responded with a record-setting road trip.

On Saturday, Harvard did the near-impossible against Yale, notching the fourth-largest comeback in Division I history. The Crimson erased a 23-point deficit to take down the Bulldogs (11-14, 2-6 Ivy League), 72-69.

The largest comeback in program history extended Harvard’s win streak against Yale to eight games, and came on the heels of a victory over Brown (13-9, 1-7) on Friday. After starting the game on a 15-0 run, the Crimson proved too much for the Bears. Harvard never dropped the lead despite a late surge from Brown in a 87-79 win that saw two Crimson players log more than 20 points.

With the two wins, Harvard (10-11, 5-3) remains undefeated on the road in Ivy League play.

HARVARD 72, YALE 69

Down by one with two minutes on the clock, senior guard Kit Metoyer drove into the lane for a tough layup. After her shot rattled off the backboard, classmate Shilpa Tummala grabbed the offensive board and threw it in for the go-ahead bucket. The Crimson had trailed for the near-entirety of the contest, but it would not trail again.

“We played our hearts out in the second half,” Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said. “What we were trying to do was do a better job of playing as a team both offensively and defensively, which we did not do very well in the first half. We had to chip our way [back], and we were trying to do that with teamwork. We were not trying to do that separately.”

And what a comeback it was.

After a first quarter that saw Yale shoot 57 percent from the field and a first half where the Bulldogs missed only three out of 11 times beyond the arc, Harvard seemed down and out.

“Unfortunately we started slowly, and that coupled with Yale being on a shooting run like I haven’t seen before, we dug ourselves a deep, deep hole,” Delaney-Smith said. “Everybody was just draining threes. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

After going down by 23 with two minutes left in the half, the Crimson began its run at history. A three from freshman guard Sydney Skinner with 1:56 remaining in the second began a 14-0 burst that brought the Crimson within nine at the half.

In the second half, Harvard continued its run. After the Bulldogs opened with a quick four points to start the third quarter, Harvard responded with eight unanswered points to come within six.

From there, the two teams matched each other point-for-point until a jumper from junior forward Destiny Nunley and a three from freshman guard Madeline Raster finally tied up the game, 60-60, with 5:26 left in the fourth.

After trading free throws and layups in the dwindling minutes of the fourth, Tummala’s layup sealed the deal as the Crimson made three trips to the line in the game’s final minute to finish the epic comeback, 72-69.

“Our team has some really strong resiliency,” Tummala said. “This isn’t something that we didn’t think could happen. We never wavered in our faith to be able to win the game.”

HARVARD 87, BROWN 79

Facing off against a struggling Brown squad on Friday, Harvard took an early lead that proved to be enough to defeat the Bears in Providence.

The game began with a barrage of scoring as seniors Tummala, Metoyer, and co-captain AnnMarie Healy combined for 20 of the Crimson’s 24 first-quarter points.

“We had a lot of people step up and hit some big shots—from our freshmen to seniors,” Tummala said. “It was just all about attacking and being in that attacking mentality. It was just knowing that our teammates are going to attack and [then] just being there to gather up and recover anything our teammates miss.”

After out-rebounding Brown 27-6 in the first half, the Crimson took a 44-26 lead into the break.

In the second half, the Bears made another push. After matching Harvard point-for-point in the third, Brown came within eight after a 12-point run early in the fourth.

After trading shots for much of the quarter, a long three from Bears guard Shayna Mehta put Brown within six of the Crimson with a little over a minute left on the clock.

Despite the 32-point frame from Brown, however, Harvard held on in the last minute thanks to timely free-throw shooting and strong defense.

The Crimson outrebounded the Bears, 45-23, while Metoyer lead all scorers with 23.

“Defensively it was just trying not [to have] little breakdowns or mental breakdowns,” Tummala said. “For the first time I thought we really put that together at the end of the game.”

—Staff writer Troy Boccelli can be reached at troy.boccelli@thecrimson.com.