W. Hoops Earns 13th Seed, Will Face Tar Heels

Chapel Hill, North Carolina has seen its share of great basketball over its history. This weekend the Harvard women’s basketball program will have a chance to add to that history.

In an evening of revelry at the Stockyard Restaurant in Allston, Mass., yesterday, the Harvard players erupted in cheers as they discovered their team had earned a 13th seed in the NCAA midwest regional. The 13th seed matches the best ever received by an Ivy women’s team. North Carolina, a fourth seed ranked 16th by the Associated Press, will be Harvard’s first round opponent on Saturday.

“I love where we’re going and I love who we’re playing,” Harvard Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said. “It’s a place with a great basketball tradition. That motivates our kids. That’s fabulous.”

The Tar Heels drew a peak audience of 7,842 fans for its regular season finale against Duke last month. The Crimson—whose best home crowd this year has been about 6,000 fewer—can’t wait to play on such a big stage.

“You know there’s the tradition, you know they’ll bring fans,” senior guard Jenn Monti said. “We don’t know whether it’ll be televised, but it’ll be big fans, and a big band. Carolina is big time.”

Saturday won’t be the first time Harvard has taken on North Carolina in the postseason. The 1996-97 team drew a top-seeded North Carolina team that featured a speedy guard named Marion Jones, who would win five track medals at the Sydney Olympics three years later.

Harvard went on to lose that game 78-53, but Delaney-Smith called it one of her proudest moments, because her team played to the end despite being outmatched at every position.

“We were incredibly respectable,” Delaney-Smith said. “[UNC Coach Sylvia Hatchell] couldn’t take anybody out of the ballgame until the last three minutes. For that I’m proud.”

A year later in 1998, Harvard earned more than just a moral victory against top-seeded Stanford. Featuring a senior class with three years of tournament experience, Harvard stunned the Cardinal, 71-67, in Palo Alto, Calif. The victory is still the only time a 16th seed has ever beaten a top seed in NCAA basketball history. Harvard bowed out with an 82-64 defeat to Arkansas in the next round.

Harvard’s upset of Stanford has not been forgotten in the national basketball conscience. An ESPN commentator’s reference to the game early in the selection show yesterday drew loud cheers from the Harvard players, who had donned black shirts with white letters that read, “Let’s Dance 2002,” on their backs.

This year’s North Carolina team isn’t as renowned as either of Harvard’s opponents in 1997 or 1998. This year’s Tar Heel team went 24-8 and placed second in the ACC regular season and tournament. Last year, North Carolina went 15-14 and missed the tournament entirely.

Harvard had not made the NCAA tournament since the 1998 season, which means this year’s team has no postseason experience. Delaney-Smith considers the inexperience a weakness her team will have to overcome, but she feels her team has proven itself in pressure situations throughout this season.

“Our strength was comebacks and winning close ball games,” Delaney-Smith said. “This team has done the best job in my 20 years [of coaching] of winning close ball games and 20-point turnarounds.”

Players and coaches agreed that Harvard’s best chance will be if North Carolina doesn’t take the Crimson seriously. But Harvard’s reputation as the greatest cinderella in women’s basketball’s will make that less likely. Still, the Crimson will be at an advantage in that it enters the tournament with nothing to lose.

“That upset [over Stanford] is definitely something people still remember and talk about, but I still think being a higher seed they’ll have more pressure,” said sophomore Ivy Player of the Year Hana Peljto.

Peljto, for one, was excited to see Harvard’s potential second-round matchup. The winner between Harvard and North Carolina will play Minnesota if the fifth-seeded Gophers can beat 12th-seeded UNLV. Minnesota is Peljto’s home state, and the University of Minnesota was one of the top five schools she considered attending.

“[Minnesota] was my hometown team,” Peljto said. “It’ll be awesome if we get to play them.”

Harvard will need more than Peljto’s strong incentive to win to come out with a victory against North Carolina. And Harvard will need to play a full 40 minutes to win—something it hasn’t done throughout the Ivy season.

But Delaney-Smith, whose teams have been marked by ill-fated illnesses and injuries in her four years between tournament appearances, is optimistic now that everyone is coming together and peaking at the right time.

“If we put a whole game together we can beat them,” Delaney-Smith said. “As you all know, we haven’t done that yet. But we’re getting better and better. The slate is clean.”