W. Basketball Takes Harvard Invitational

Harvard women's basketball coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, the winningest basketball coach in Harvard history, got her 250th career win yesterday in front of 211 regular joes and two famous fans.

Marion Jones, the fastest woman in the world, and her husband, world champion shot-putter C.J. Hunter, were on hand at Lavietes Pavilion to watch their close friend, Harvard junior center Melissa Johnson, lead the Crimson (3-2) to an 83-50 blowout win over Sacred Heart (1-3) to claim the Harvard Invitational title.

"I'm so glad we won both [games], and that's just great for us right now," Delaney-Smith said. "I don't even care about my 250th. Anyone who's been coaching as long as I have, it's bound to happen. It's the law of averages. I don't know that it was that great a feat."

Win number 249 came on Friday with a big-time 66-52 win over Big Ten power Ohio State (2-1).

Delaney-Smith, who is in her 18th year as the Crimson coach--the longest current tenure in the Ivy League--has guided Harvard to six Ivy titles and is one conference win away from her 150th Ivy win. Her all-time record is 250-193.

"She gives us so much, so it's nice to try and give her something in return," captain Laela Sturdy said.

"I'm really happy for Kathy," said Johnson, who grabbed a team-high 18 rebounds yesterday, good for a sixth-place tie on the Harvard single-game rebounding list. "I'm glad we had it at home because next weekend we're going away. It's really special for her. She deserves it."

Harvard 83, Sacred Heart 50

Against a significantly weaker opponent than it faced the night before, Harvard jumped out to big leads on strong spurts en route to a rout over Sacred Heart yesterday.

After a slow start for both teams, the Crimson found itself up 17-12 at the 10:15 mark before going on an 18-2 run that spanned nearly eight minutes.

During the run, Sturdy drained two three-pointers from the top of the key, scored another basket a step or two inside the three-point line and dished off to senior guard Courtney Egelhoff in the right corner for a jump shot.

"I think basketball is all about momentum," Sturdy said. "We definitely had it in that run in the first half. I felt confident with the pass or the shot. Our team is definitely running offenses well."

Sturdy finished with 20 points to lead all scorers, and her all-out play earned her a much-needed rest with 5:19 left when Ides entered the game for her.

The Pioneers cut the lead to 17 by halftime, 39-22, finishing on a Brooke Rutnik three-pointer.

Whatever Sacred Heart Coach Ed Swanson told his team in the locker room must have worked, as the Pioneers came out firing to open the second half.

Within a minute, Sacred Heart senior center Heather Yablonski hit a jumper from the left corner, fouled Johnson, who hit a free throw, and stole a pass.

Rutnik hit a jump shot at 17:37 and followed it with a three-pointer to cut the Crimson lead to 40-31 with 16:50 left to play. Harvard called timeout.

Ten seconds after play resumed, Egelhoff hit a three-pointer to start a 14-point Crimson run and open up a 54-31 lead.

The Pioneers would not recover.

Playing a varied lineup that sometimes consisted of three freshmen and two sophomores, Harvard ran the score up on Sacred Heart, grabbing leads of 61-39 and 71-46.

"All they needed was two or three threes to get back in the game, and I didn't want that to happen," Delaney-Smith said. "I also wanted this team to increase their lead. I feel that being up by 14 or 16 or 17, I wanted a bigger lead."

Two free throws by Pioneer freshman center Tara Brady and a jump shot by junior guard Abby Crotty gave Sacred Heart its final tally.

With 3.4 seconds left in the game, the Crimson would not stop. Freshman forward Hallie Boger hit a free throw to bring the Crimson to the 80-point mark.

After the ball rolled off a Sacred Heart guard with 2.8 seconds left to play, the Crimson had the ball under its own basket, and an in-bounds pass to Boger at the top of the key set up a buzzer-beating three-pointer with .8 seconds to go.

Although Delaney-Smith said her team was still a little slow, she was pleased with the effort.

"I think a lot of people stepped up today," Delaney-Smith said. "A lot of people are doing some scoring."

Johnson, who finished with 16 points, dominated the smaller Pioneers.

"I don't think she was reading the defense well in the first half and she did a nice job in the second half," Delaney-Smith said. "And when her shots didn't fall, she went after the rebound and that's all we have to do."

When told that Johnson had finished with 18 rebounds, Delaney-Smith said, "Oh shoot! I should have left her in for 20."

"When I was out there, I felt like every rebound should have been mine," Johnson said. "I felt like I was bigger than they were and I was working really hard to get to the paint. I felt like they were focusing on me in the post. What Kathy told me before the game was that if they do that, make sure you get great rebounding positioning."

The win was especially sweet for Johnson because it was in front of Jones and Hunter, two friends from her days back at the University of North Carolina before she transferred to Harvard last year.

"We had a great win two days ago [over Ohio State], and Marion and C.J. came up right after that," Johnson said. "Unfortunately, they couldn't make it for [that] game. This is one of the best surprises I've ever had in my entire life. I was walking to my dorm and all of a sudden I turn around and she's right there."

Harvard 66, Ohio State 52

Despite a frustrating first half in which the Crimson had trouble dealing with the Buckeye press, Harvard came out in the second half with renewed intensity and controlled the pace of the game.

The Crimson's victory came in large part because of the play of its freshmen. Breehan Kelley was an able ball-handler, and Kate Ides made her presence felt in the paint. Johnson led Harvard scorers with 18 points.

It was Harvard's first-ever win over a Big Ten team. The Crimson fell 101-42 to Minnesota in 1980 and 94-38 to Northwestern in 1981.

In the first half, the Crimson had trouble helping sophomore point guard Jennifer Monti when Ohio State pressured her in the backcourt.

Harvard doesn't have a true backup point guard, so Monti, the Crimson's only confident ball-handler, had her hands full.

Harvard turned the ball over 13 times in the first half, which Ohio State translated into 11 points.

While Harvard was playing aggressively, it just couldn't seem to make crisp passes, and the team seemed frustrated, going into the half down 26-23.

At halftime, however, Delaney-Smith used Ohio State's press to rally her troops.

"When you play a team like this and they press you, it means they don't respect you," Delaney-Smith said. "We outplayed them in the first half, but we had trouble with the pace of the game."

In the second half, Harvard made the necessary adjustments to break Ohio State's press, including slowing the clock down to play a tempo that better suits the Crimson.

Delaney-Smith said her players were not as fit as she would like because many Crimson players have missed practices recently due to minor injuries.

On Friday, this didn't hurt the Crimson, unlike in its loss to B.U. on Tuesday, when the Crimson played too up-tempo and tired out too early.

"We're out of shape," Delaney-Smith said. "We tried to adjust to the fatigue factor in the second half. We didn't run as much, took our time on the shots and used the clock well."

In particular, Harvard started giving the ball to Kelley, who proved she could be relied upon to handle the basketball when Monti is pressured.

"We knew our freshmen were talented when we recruited them," Delaney-Smith said. "But you can't predict how poised they are going to be. In particular, Bree just keeps getting better and better."

Usually a small forward, the 6'0 Kelley moved over to the two spot and showed tremendous poise for a freshman, scoring 14 points, the second-highest total on the team, in only 26 minutes. Kelley made all eight of her free throw attempts as well as two three-point shots.

"We know what we can do as a team," Kelley said. "The plan for this game was to come out with fire and intensity in every play. In the first half we played okay, but we needed to play one possession at a time, like we did in the second. That's really all you can do."

The 6'2 Ides provided height and strength in the paint as she played 24 minutes and scored five points.

Johnson, who at 6'5 towers above most other players on the court, showed she has the ability to score at will. She scored eight of her 18 points in the final 4:30 of the game to seal the victory for Harvard.

After a much-needed day of rest today, the Crimson will get ready for this weekend's tournament at Holy Cross.

"I feel like we haven't had a day off in about two weeks because the one day off we had was a travel day and it was really hard on us," Delaney-Smith said. "We have three practices--that's good, we need that. We've been preparing for game after game after game."

And after 250 wins, anyone would deserve a little break.