Matchup of League's Top Scorers Fizzles

With the Ivy League’s second-leading scorer, Penn’s Jewel Clark, set to bang bodies with Hana Peljto and Reka Cserny under the boards, the Quakers’ bench wasn’t exactly the first thing on the minds of Crimson defenders.

But it was Penn’s second string—and not Clark—that dumped 41 points on Harvard in propelling the Quakers to victory.

“No, I didn’t [expect Penn’s bench to be that deep],” Crimson coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said. “We stopped Jewel and I think we did a good job, but they had balanced scoring.”

Clark and center Jennifer Fleischer alternately covered Peljto and Cserny, but the strategy proved futile as neither was able to consistently halt the Crimson’s big two.

Peljto dominated Clark during their early encounters, using her four-inch height advantage to post up on the right block before spinning outside for a layup-jump-hook hybrid shot just out of Clark’s reach. The move twice drew a foul on Clark in the opening 15:03, sending her into halftime with three.

Though she played tentatively during her time on the floor, a quick foul in the second sent her to the bench with four. With 6:48 remaining and less than a minute after re-entering, she shoved off Peljto in an attempt to grab a loose ball for her fifth and final infraction after playing only 19 minutes, tallying just nine points.

Harvard went on a 13-0 run to retake the lead just moments later, spurred by nine points from Cserny and Peljto.

But the Quaker subs were quick to recover from Clark’s absence. Of the 41 points scored by the subs, 27 came in the second half, compared to the Crimson’s game total of four.

The Penn bench took control of the squad’s offense for good with 13:42 remaining in the second half, when starting guard Karen Habrukowich sank the second of two free throws. It was the starting rotation’s final point, as the second team would account for the final 25.

Cat Makarewich burned Harvard for 11 of her 13 during the stretch, nailing three wide open treys, the last of which ended Penn’s 4:23 scoring drought and snapped the Crimson’s 13-point run.

“[Makarewich] was the one; I thought we should have stopped her threes,” Delaney-Smith said. “The three-for-four [on three-point tries]—I felt like it was a mental breakdown defensively, because its the same offense that Cornell runs and we stopped that shot a number of times. And that shouldn’t happen.”

Bench Pressed

Delaney-Smith got what she asked for. After her second string was kept virtually scoreless against the Quakers, Delaney-Smith said, “I am trying to get this team to be more balanced. I don’t want Reka and Hana scoring all the points and no one else scoring. That’s not what I want from this team.”

Saturday night, Harvard turned the tables on Princeton, with Crimson reserves racking up 40 points to the Tigers’ 15.

“That should have been last night,” Delaney-Smith said following the game. “That’s how it should be every night.”

The 40 points from the bench is the second highest total Harvard accrued this year, behind the 41 point total against Central Connecticut in a 94-47 rout on Dec. 3.

“There was definitely great teamwork, great team defense,” junior Rochelle Bell said. “Everyone had fun, everyone played well.”

Mind Games

“Is this not a schizophrenic team?” asked coach Kathy Delaney-Smith after the lopsided victory over Princeton.

Indeed, it appears that Delaney-Smith has been coaching a team of split mind this year. When playing within itself, the Crimson has performed exceedingly well—an 85-81 loss to No. 10 Colorado, a 91-74 victory over Boston University and a 73-59 win over Providence. But when playing tight, Harvard has lost games it might ordinarily have won.

“Tight play causes bad decisions, I was trying to get them to relax and let the game come to them,” said Delaney-Smith after the loss to Penn. “I am a believer that winning cures all. We haven’t had the luxury of a win to make us feel good about ourselves.”

For a team that returned all but one member from the team that went 22-5 and a perfect 14-0 in the Ivy League, the Crimson’s fiercest rival has been itself.

“UConn is the exact same team from last year, the best women’s basketball team in the history of women’s college sports,” Delaney-Smith said. “They looked God-awful [Friday] night. Why? Because they lost a couple and it’s just like that little chip in the armor and it just makes you hesitate, and makes you lose just a touch of confidence and [say], ‘Maybe we’re not so great, and maybe we’re not so invincible,’ and so this is just a classic reaction to losing.”

The coaching staff has had trouble getting its team to loosen up, but not for a lack of effort.

“We have not stopped trying,” Delaney-Smith said. “We have done a number of things, from humor to music to this program, to that program. There is not a sports psychology book I have not read right now, believe me.”

There is a certain edge that was present on last year’s team that this team has been searching for, and hopefully found Saturday against Princeton.

“All of our games last year were close, we didn’t blow people out last year, but we just had attitude. We had confidence,” Delaney-Smith said. “Honestly, if we had strung two wins together we would not be going through this. This would not be happening to us, because winning, we would say, ‘We are that good,’ but we don’t have the luxury of wins to give us that confidence back, so now we’re in that situation where we have to be as tough as we’ve ever been in our lives athletically. I’d like to say Harvard student-athletes can do that, so we’ll see.”

Losing Control

With three losses in its first five conference games, the Crimson has lost control over its own destiny for the first time in three seasons.

“We were talking in the locker room after the [Penn] game and just saying there’s really not that much pressure on us right now,” senior guard Bev Moore said. “We just need to go out there and play for ourselves and play to win and we’re basically playing for our pride. There’s no expectations.”

The Quakers downed Dartmouth yesterday afternoon 71-58 in a battle of the team’s two remaining undefeateds to claim sole possession of first place while Harvard sits in a tie for sixth with Princeton after its win over the Tigers.

The Crimson has two games remaining against cellar-dweller Yale and third-place Brown, and one against Penn, the Big Green, Cornell, Princeton and Columbia.

If Harvard is to have any shot of earning the Ancient Eight’s automatic NCAA tournament berth, the Crimson must win out to finish the season at 11-3. But even then Harvard needs help.

Under the most likely scenario, Dartmouth would need to beat Penn on the road, giving both squads two losses apiece—after their hypothetical losses to the Crimson—but each would still need to lose another conference game for Harvard to have a shot at the tournament, which just weeks ago seemed all but certain.

—Staff writer J. Patrick Coyne can be reached at coyne@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.