W. Basketball Soars

Last night's Harvard women's basketball game was the type that rims dread.

The iron on both ends of Briggs Cage took a beating as Harvard and Northeastern combined for 76 missed shots during the Crimson's 65-58 victory over the Huskies. But all the clanging metal worked to Harvard's advantage; the home team pulled down an amazing 50 rebounds to ensure the victory.

"Our youth causes us to be a little impatient on offense," Harvard coach Kathy Delany Smith said. "Defense and rebounding won the game for us."

The victory brought the Crimson to 8-3 and dropped the Huskies to 6-4.

The evening began a little slow for Harvard, as Northeastern worked itself to an early 19-13 lead. But the Crimson offense exploded for 13 unanswered points and would never trail again.

That was the story of the Harvard offense all night. Its numbers were unspectacular--take its 37.5 field goal percentage--but it did the job, keeping the Huskies at bay.

"We did what we had to do to win," captain Tammy Butler said. "The defensive rebounders stepped it up when it had to, and when we needed a critical basket, we got one."

Many of those critical baskets came from freshman Allison Feaster, who led the Crimson with 17 rebounds and added 13 points. Junior Elizabeth Proudfit led Harvard scorers with 17.

Thanks to efforts such as these, Harvard led at halftime by a comfortable 38-26 margin. But there would be trouble in the second half.

For the rims, mostly. Harvard, which shot a respectable 51 percent in the first half, bottomed to 19 percent in the second period. The Huskies weren't much better; they only hit 31.7 percent of their second-half shots.

For the first 6:20, the Crimson could only muster two Feaster free throws, as Northeastern slowly whittled the lead to 40-34.

Unable to run its half court offense effectively, Harvard instead relied on getting its points on the free throw line. Which was a good plan, since the referees began to call fouls with reckless abandon.

True, the game at times seemed to be as rough as Monday's Bowl games, but the calls were often illogical. All this resulted in Harvard going to the line 22 times in the second half, an opportunity that it did not squander.

The Crimson made 18 of those free throws, and that proved to be too much of a burden for Northeastern to recover from. The Huskies at times got close, but never were a real threat to break out against the Crimson's tenacious defense.

Northeastern quickly learned that playing a half court game would amount to a virtual defensive stalemate, but when the Huskies tried to pressure, the Crimson broke it with relative ease.

"Tonight the guards handled the press real well," Butler said. "I don't think that it affected us very much."

To put it bluntly for the Huskies, they were doomed. A combination of good rebounding, good defense, and good transition is pretty hard to stop. Even if you can't buy a basket.

"It's an important game for us to hang on to," Smith said. "We have the ability to handle whatever's thrown at us." Northeastern  58 Harvard  65