W. Hoops Seniors Celebrate With Class

The seniors on the Harvard women’s basketball team spent each of their previous three seasons on the wrong end of Ivy championship celebrations, but on Friday night it was finally their turn.

Their freshman year, Dartmouth and Princeton split the Ivy title. Their sophomore year, they had to endure a humiliating season-ending evening at then two-time defending Ivy champion Dartmouth, who twice delayed the game to give senior Courtney Banghart bouquets of flowers. Then last year, Harvard watched Penn celebrate its Ivy title by making a scene on the Crimson’s home floor and cutting down the Lavietes nets.

When Harvard played its tournament-clinching game on Friday, the team sportsmanly suppressed its celebration until the final buzzer and, after a moment of celebration, lined up to shake hands. By the time the Ivy championship plate was presented, Yale had plenty of time to politely exit to the locker room.

“We just wanted to have class and finish out the game, and that’s we did,” sophomore forward Hana Peljto said.

Beating the Best

Harvard’s victory over Brown was its 12th straight. The winning streak has hardly come without peril—witness a 77-75 double overtime win over Cornell and a 59-55 victory over Penn.

Harvard has struggled to maintain a high level of play for a full 40 minutes. The fact that it will need to do so to win an NCAA game isn’t lost on the team.

“We’re Ivy League champions without really playing that well all year,” Peljto said. “Tonight was probably one of our best games and it still wasn’t complete. Maybe in the tournament our best games will come out.”

Harvard’s toughest opponent this season was Kansas State, who is ranked 14th in both the AP and Coaches’ poll. The Wildcats beat Harvard 72-56 in a game where Peljto wasn’t at full strength, having missed the previous day’s game with a sprained ankle.

The closest that an Ivy team has come to winning an NCAA game since the 1998 Crimson was the 2000 Dartmouth team, who led with under five minutes left against defending national champion Purdue, but fell 70-66.

That Dartmouth result might have been different had the Green’s then-freshman center Katharine Hanks not gotten herself into early foul trouble. This year, foul trouble for Peljto and freshman Reka Cserny was a key factor in some of Harvard’s first-half struggles, but the team has improved drastically in that area since then.

Penn, for all its celebration last year after winning 21 straight games and completeing an undefeated Ivy season, was blown away 100-57 by Texas Tech at NCAAs—far and away the worst Ivy loss in postseason history.

Lucky Thirteen

Unlike in 1998, this year’s Harvard women’s basketball team won’t need to beat an NCAA top seed to advance past the first round. This year’s squad will be getting an easier draw—at least a 14th seed, and most likely a 13th seed in one of four 16-team regional brackets, provided it defeats Dartmouth tomorrow.

Out of all the NCAA selection and seeding criteria, the rating percentages index (RPI)—a weighted average of a team’s record, its opponents’ records, and its opponents’ opponents’ records—is by far the most crucial for determining Harvard’s seeding.

Harvard’s RPI was 61st in the nation following Saturday’s games—better than any recent Ivy champion. This bodes well that its seeding will match or beat the 2000 Dartmouth team, which had the nation’s 68th-best RPI and earned a 13th seed—the highest ever for an Ivy team. The 2001 Penn team had the 99th-best RPI and earned a 15th seed.

As of Saturday, only Harvard and Liberty had earned NCAA berths, leaving plenty of the 31 NCAA at-large berths to be decided. The conference tournament results could shift Harvard’s seed up or down. To get a higher seed, Harvard will need teams with a lower RPI than its own to win their conference tournaments. These teams will be seeded below Harvard, and push the Crimson’s seeding up.

At press time, there were 14 conferences that lacked a team still eligible for the automatic berth with a higher RPI than Harvard’s. This puts Harvard in solid position for a 13 seed..

But three of those conferences—the Horizon League, the Mid-Continent Conference, and the Patriot League—all had teams within 11 spots of Harvard in the RPI, and these teams could be seeded above Harvard if either their RPI improves due to conference tournament wins, or if they are seeded above the Crimson due to criteria other than the RPI. The advantage other teams have is in victories over Top 100 teams, of which Harvard has none. Harvard’s advantage over the other teams is that it’s undefeated since January—an undefeated record in the last 10 games before the tournament is looked upon favorably by the committee.

Where To?

Harvard’s chances of staying close to home for NCAAs are slim, and Harvard Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith is just fine with that.

“I’m partial to the sun, and the warm climates,” she said.

Basketball, unlike NCAA soccer for instance, puts a much higher priority on competitive balance than reducing traveling costs. Thus, it’s much more likely to ship teams across the country.

The only nearby schools in high national standing are UConn, Boston College and Notre Dame. UConn, whose RPI is third in the nation, will be too high a seed to play the Crimson. BC, whose RPI is 29th, will be too a low a seed—barring a miraculous run through the Big East tournament. Notre Dame, with an RPI of 23rd, is also an outside possibility.

Harvard is much more likely headed for the mountains and prairies than the sun belt. The vast majority of teams in contention for three and four seeds come from the Big 12—namely Kansas St., Texas, Baylor, Texas Tech, Iowa St. and Colorado. Conference leader Oklahoma is a likely top seed.

Southeastern-located possibilities include North Carolina, South Carolina, Old Dominion and Louisiana Tech. Florida International, a team with an RPI of 13, is an outside possibility, but the Golden Panthers have gotten minimal recognition from the polls and are unlikely to get much NCAA recognition because they only have two wins over Top 50 teams.

There’s a lot of subjectivity involved in the selection process, and whatever happens, Harvard will have to wait till next Sunday at 5 p.m. to find out.