Tar Heels Overpower W. Hoops in NCAA Tourney

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—The Harvard women’s basketball team knew it needed to stick to its game plan to have any chance of pulling off an upset against fourth-seeded North Carolina, and it did that for the game’s first eight minutes.

But after that, the Tar Heels exploited Harvard breakdowns on both the ends of the floor and rolled to an 85-58 victory.

Harvard (22-6) kept within three points of UNC (25-8) through the game’s first 11 minutes, but a 14-2 Tar Heel run buried the Crimson in a hole it couldn’t escape.

UNC forward Coretta Brown burned Harvard with 10 points in a row during that stretch en route to a career-high 28. She tallied 21 points and five threes in the first half alone.

Harvard Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, nationally renowned for leading the 1998 Harvard team to an upset of top-seeded Stanford, couldn’t script another Cinderella story this season.

“[Brown’s threes were] something we came into the game trying to prevent,” Delaney-Smith said. “That gave North Carolina a lot of adrenaline and a big boost, and we sort of lost our composure at that point. You can’t beat a team like North Carolina and come that far away from your game plan.”

Freshman Reka Cserny showed poise beyond her years leading Harvard with 16 points and shooting 8-for-9 from the line. Sophomore Hana Peljto had 13 points, but none in the first half after an opening-minute jumper.

Harvard kept pace with North Carolina for the first 10 minutes using a variety of offensive weapons. After Peljto’s jumper, co-captain Katie Gates—Harvard’s early-game go-to player so many times in her career—hit two threes in the second minute to put the Crimson up 8-4. Cserny scored Harvard’s next four points—two on free throws after drawing an acrobatic foul and two on a baseline jumper.

“The key for us was that we didn’t want to be like a deer in the headlights for the first five minutes, and we weren’t,” senior guard Jenn Monti said.

The Crimson’s chances began to sour as Cserny drew her second foul seven minutes into the game and Delaney-Smith sat for the next five minutes.

In Cserny’s absence on the court, Monti found success by hitting sophomore forward Tricia Tubridy on a backdoor cut, but thereafter the Harvard offense struggled with turnovers. When Cserny re-entered the game, Harvard trailed 23-16. The Crimson had managed to overcome deficits due to Cserny’s foul trouble in past games, but a seven-point deficit to North Carolina was too much to overcome.

The first-half ineffectiveness of Ivy Player of the Year Hana Peljto made any consistent Crimson scoring difficult to come by. In going 0-for-6 in the final minute, Peljto earned good looks at the basket—the kind she typically hit during the regular season—but her shots didn’t fall.

The performance was a continuation of her 6-of-23 shooting effort against Dartmouth. UNC executed Dartmouth’s successful game plan against Peljto—be physical until the referees start calling the fouls. They never did.

“[The Tar Heels] were more physical for me than I was used to,” Peljto said.

Delaney-Smith felt that both teams suffered because of the referees’ inconsistency.

“You couldn’t predict [the officiating],” Delaney-Smith said. “You couldn’t adjust your game because you didn’t know what was going to happen.”

But the increased pressure defense from UNC had much more of an impact on Harvard’s struggles at the end of the first half than anything else.

“We picked it up defensively and forced turnovers—that’s when we made our run,” said Brown, who led UNC with four steals.

Monti and the rest of the Harvard offense failed to adjust to the changes at that point and UNC took control of the game.

“I think we weren’t able to set our offenses as much as we would have liked,” she said. “We’ve always been working on backdoor cuts but those require impeccable timing and some real trust and we didn’t react well to their changes.”

Monti closed out the first half with the ghastly stat line of zero assists and points to five turnovers. Delaney-Smith said that UNC’s ability to throw Monti out of her game was more of a factor in the defeat than any of the Tar Heels’ offensive talent.

Harvard was effective stopping the UNC offense early in the game. The Tar Heels made futile attempts to exploit their height advantage inside with 6’6 center Candace Sutton, who didn’t have enough skill to beat the aggressive Crimson defenders.

But Harvard’s defense began to fail when UNC started taking more outside and transition shots.

“I think our triangle-and-two was good until they started hitting in transition and we didn’t react well.” Monti said.

Guarding the three had not been Harvard’s strong point this season, and it was a major factor in its previous worst loss of the season—a 93-77 defeat to Boston University. Last night evoked shades of that defeat, as the Crimson surrendered five first-half threes to Brown.

“[Brown] hit two or three incredible shots over our defense,” Delaney-Smith said. “Other than that it was just a complete 100 percent breakdown on Harvard’s part. She just had complete, wide-open looks.”

The Crimson did a better job of limiting Brown early in the second. On the offensive end, Monti, Peljto and Cserny each came out more relaxed and hit their shots to cut the deficit to 46-34.

But Harvard struggled to cover Tar Heel forward Jennifer Thomas, who scored seven points on a 13-0 UNC run that ended any distant comeback hopes.

Thomas finished with a season-high 18 points after averaging just five per game during the regular season. Senior guard Nikki Teasley helped set her up for the majority of those scores en route to 11 assists on the night.

During the latter part of the second half when the game was well out of reach, Delaney-Smith made more of an effort to play her seniors.

With the score 70-40, Monti took the game into her own hands and scored the game’s next six points unassisted.

“We wanted to keep it somewhat close,” Monti said. “There’s a big difference I think between losing by 20 and losing by 30. We just didn’t want to go out like that.”

The next Harvard basket came from co-captain Laura Barnard, who hit her last career three-pointer. Seniors Lindsay Ryba, Sharon Nunamaker and Barnard were all players whose promising careers were plagued by injuries, but earned the right to play in an NCAA tournament before their careers were finished.

“The injuries the senior class has had have been phenomenal,” Delaney-Smith said. “A lot of them don’t get a lot of game time and have been incredible leaders in the program. You won’t find seniors who are not out on the floor or who are not getting into the game who give that kind of leadership to a team.”

When the game finally ended, the teams shook hands vigorously, and the Harvard team put its hands together at center court in a sign of unity.

Once the stage was cleared, the Tar Heels did a victory lap with the cheerleaders and looked ahead to the continuation of their season. Meanwhile, the Crimson players coped with the end of theirs.

No. 4 NORTH CAROLINA 85,

No. 13 W. HOOPS 58

at Carmichael Auditorium, Chapel Hill, N.C.

UNC (25-8, 11-5 ACC) Thomas 7-8 4-7 5, Brown 9-16 5-6 28, Sutton 5-12 3-9 13, Metcalf 1-11 0-0 2, Teasley 2-9 2-2 8, Baptist 1-2 0-0 2, Bell 3-5 1-2 7, McBee 0-2 0-0 0, Chambers 0-1 0-0 0, Laaksonen 0-2 0-0 0, Davis 2-2 1-4 5, Coughran 1-1 0-0 2. Totals 31-71 16-30 85.

HARVARD (22-6, 13-1 Ivy) Peljto 5-15 2-2 13, Gates 2-4 1-4 7, Cserny 4-11 8-9 16, Monti 3-10 2-2 16, Tubridy 2-4 0-0 4, Johnson 0-2 0-0 0, Barnard 1-3 0-0 3, Dunham 0-3 0-0 0, Ides 1-2 0-1 3, Bell 2-3 0-0 4. Nunamaker 0-1 0-1 0, Ryba 0-1 0-0 0, Murphy 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 20-60 13-19 58.

Halftime: Harvard 24, UNC 42. 3-pt. goals: UNC 7-22 (Brown 5-9, Teasley 2-7, Metcalf 0-5), H 5-18 (Gates 2-4, Peljto 1-1, Monti, Barnard 1-3). Fouled out: None. Rebounds: UNC 55 (Brown, Bell 7), H 38 (Peljto 7, Cserny 6). Assists: UNC 21 (Teasley 11), H 5 (Cserny 2). Fouls: UNC 19, H 22. A: 1725.