W. Hoops Takes Third at ECAC Holiday Fest

WORCESTER--The outcome wasn't what the Harvard women's basketball team or Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith wanted, but it also wasn't unexpected.

After falling 89-61 to a gritty, veteran Holy Cross team on Friday, the Crimson (4-3) claimed third place in the ECAC Holiday Festival with a 74-71 victory over La Salle (4-2) Saturday at the Hart Center, showing flashes of brilliance and breaking down in both games.

"We have great basketball players and I think right now we are a good team, but we're not a great team yet," sophomore point guard Jen Monti said. "We don't quite have it. We have moments of it."

It was a weekend filled with excitement and tension as the Crimson gelled or fell apart, sometimes flip-flopping in a matter of minutes as Delaney-Smith tried out different player combinations and defensive schemes.

Harvard 74, La Salle 71

For Harvard, getting the lead was the easy part. Holding it was a little harder.

Harvard captain Laela Sturdy hit a three-pointer 57 seconds into the game to open the scoring, and soon the Crimson was off to the races.

Briefly down 9-8 with 15:13 left in the first half, Harvard started on a 26-9 run, sparked by treys from Sturdy, freshman Bree Kelley and sophomore Katie Gates along the way.

At 5:38, La Salle's Jen Zenszner hit one of her four three-pointers to cut the Harvard lead to 34-20.

After three Crimson free throws, Sturdy threw a low-high pass to Johnson at the free throw line for a jump shot at 3:42 to extend the Harvard lead to 19.

La Salle, however, ran its own version of the two-minute drill, scoring nine points as the half wound down before Johnson, who made the all-tournament team, hit a jumper to give Harvard a 45-33 lead at halftime.

Thirteen seconds into the second half, the Explorers started whittling away at the Crimson lead again as Melissa Hindenlang hit a jump shot and Zenszner added another three-pointer to cut the Harvard lead to seven. Soon, it was down to five.

At 16:38, Monti drove the lane and dished one of her nine assists to Johnson for a bucket that sparked a four-minute, 12-0 Crimson run. Johnson would finish with 15 points and 12 rebounds.

But again, the Explorers came crawling back slowly on the shooting of Zenszner and Hindenlang, cutting the Harvard lead to three with 2:10 left.

With a minute and change to go, Monti hit a jumper and Johnson hit a free throw a little later to put the Crimson up by six as La Salle started the desperation fouling in the waning minutes.

"When they started their comeback, we showed a little bit more poise and we were able to keep the lead," Monti said.

The Crimson held on for a three-point win despite La Salle's Shannon McDade's lay-up as time expired.

"I thought we played very tentative offensively," Delaney-Smith said. "I don't know why--if I did, I'd fix it. Although even as we played tentative, we got some great shots. To hang on is really all that matters right now. I have to figure out a way not to lose a 20-point lead."

Sturdy led Harvard scorers with 16 points and had six rebounds and five assists. Katie Gates wrapped up a good all-around weekend with 12 points on 4-of-5 shooting, including 3-of-4 from beyond the arc.

Holy Cross 89, Harvard 61

Led by tournament MVP Anna Kinne, a 5'6 senior sparkplug, Holy Cross (6-1) showed poise and power in the face of the talented yet tentative Harvard team.

The Crusaders used a 38-9 run over the last 11 minutes to rally from a brief 52-51 deficit.

"I think we were capable of beating Holy Cross, but everything had to go our way and it didn't," Delaney-Smith said. "Losing for us I don't feel was necessarily unexpected, although I felt we could have beaten them."

From the opening tip, the Crimson faced an uphill battle, falling behind 10-3 in the first four minutes. Johnson had recorded her second foul of the game by this point and was forced to watch the rest of the half from the sidelines with no points and no rebounds.

A Sturdy three-pointer keyed a 7-0 Harvard run to tie the game at 10-10, but the Crimson would soon be victim to an 11-0 Crusader spurt, capped by a three-pointer by Amanda Abraham, who shot 5-of-6 from long distance en route to a game-high 21 points.

After Crimson freshman forward Kate Ides hit a free throw, Holy Cross extended its lead to 16 as Elisa Zawadzkas hit a jumper with 8:26 left in the half.

The Crusaders got the lead to 17 before Harvard began working its offense, cutting the lead to 11 at the half after Gates hit a three-pointer and sophomore Lindsay Ryba hit a lay-up off an Ides dish.

That Crimson momentum carried over into the second half as Johnson re-entered the game for a lay-up off a Gates assist and a free throw from the ensuing foul one minute into the second.

After senior guard Courtney Egelhoff hit a jumper and Sturdy spotted up from beyond the arc, Harvard found itself down by three with 17:48 left to go.

Around five minutes later, Ides took a high-low pass from Johnson and hit a bucket under the basket to tie the game at 49-49 with 13:09 to go.

Abraham hit a jumper to put Holy Cross up by two, but Kelley then hit a three-pointer to give the Crimson its first--and only--lead of the game, 52-51 with 11:46 to go.

If the game had ended there, Harvard would have been happy.

"We just folded," Monti said. "We just collapsed around seven minutes. That was sort of scary and unpredictable."

Holy Cross went on a 38-9 run to close out the game, dominating the tiring Harvard team in all aspects of the game.

But the Crimson kept it close, cutting the lead to 12 when Johnson hit a lay-up with 2:34 left, making the final score a little misleading as the Crusaders started heading to the free-throw line. The Crusaders shot 9-of-9 from the charity stripe and hit nearly every shot they took from the field in the last two minutes.

"[Even though] we lost by 30 I don't feel they outplayed us that much," Delaney-Smith said. "They are a better team than we are right now. They are very veteran and very good."

Johnson and Kelley led the Crimson scorers with 11 apiece. Five Crusaders reached double figures.

Holy Cross shot 52 percent on the game, which was astounding compared to the Crimson's 36 percent.

But there were bright spots for the Crimson, particularly in Gates' play.

"Katie Gates, in both games, showed what she's made of," Delaney-Smith said. "She showed a lot of smart defense, a lot of scrappy defense, a lot of heart going to the boards. I would have liked her to take another shot at the end because she was pretty hot."

But the Crimson will need some help with the ball-handling in the future. Monti played 76 of a possible 80 minutes over the weekend, and Harvard was often looking for a secondary ball-handler to ease her load.

"We have been using Bree, but she's really not a point," Delaney-Smith said. "She does a good job, but she's not a point, so scrappy little rugrat defensive guards can bother her, and they do."