W. Basketball Stuns Dartmouth To Split Title

The Harvard women’s basketball team finally got the crowd that it deserved.

And so the Crimson returned the favor to the raucous 1,934 strong at Lavietes Pavilion by taking their breath away.

Facing a 15-point deficit with only 10:45 left in last night’s title-clincher against Dartmouth (16-10, 12-2 Ivy), Harvard (20-7, 12-2) ripped off a 26-4 run in less than eight minutes and willed itself to a 70-67 victory—and with it, a share of the Ivy League championship.

“Nothing like home court advantage,” Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said.

The showcase was the culmination of weeks of dominant play by the Ivy League’s best two teams. So it was only appropriate when the Ivy League’s best player, the incomparable Reka Cserny, took over in the end.

Besieged by an aggressive man-to-man defense, Harvard’s star center managed only six points in the first half and found little room in the lane.

“Our shot selection was the worst all year, in my opinion, in the first half,” Delaney-Smith said of her squad, which entered the night leading the Ivies in shooting but finished at 21.6 percent from the field in that frame. “Including Reka, which is highly unusual that I’d even be saying that.”

“Reka,” she added, “had been stopped for too many minutes.”

In the meantime, Harvard got a little help from Maureen McCaffery. The junior forward sparked the Crimson run shortly after a Jeannie Cullen jumper gave the Big Green a 51-36 lead with 10:45.

McCaffery answered with five straight points—including an electrifying three-pointer from the right side—as Harvard posted a 10-0 run over the next 2:43 while the crowd roared.

Overall, the junior from Hillsborough, Calif., finished with 16 points, shot four-of-eight from three-point range, and grabbed eight crucial rebounds.

“She can’t miss,” Cserny said. “Maybe the other teams don’t know it yet, but we all know.”

Delaney-Smith said Cserny and guard Katie Murphy, who finished with seven points and six rebounds, remained a special motivation to the younger players. After all, the two seniors faced, potentially, the closing minutes of their Harvard careers.

“[The players] love the two seniors. They were going to do everything they could not to let it slip out of their hands,” Delaney-Smith said. “Maureen epitomizes that emotion.”

And then Cserny took over the game.

At 5:50, Murphy lost the ball under the Dartmouth boards but then wreaked havoc, deflected the ball, and ultimately forced a turnover by forward Ashley Taylor—the Big Green’s third in five possessions.

During the next Harvard move, a visibly fired-up Cserny used her long body and quick footwork—“she has a great first step,” Delaney-Smith said after the game, “and everybody knows it”—to bring the Crimson within two.

Two missed Dartmouth free throws later, and feeding off of a frenzied crowd, Shana Franklin threw the most important Harvard dagger of the game—a three-pointer at 4:42 from a Cserny assist that gave the Crimson its first lead since the first half.

Cserny then poured the pressure on the Big Green, finishing with nine straight points and the unbridled confidence to drive against Dartmouth center Elise Morrison. At one point, she head-faked a pass and darted down the lane for the score.

“That first step—she can beat a lot of people, even faster people,” said Delaney-Smith of Cserny, who finished with 20 points. “So you have to play her up a little closer but she has the height for the three. She’s tough to play.”

“You can stop Reka for awhile,” she said. “But she’s gonna find a way.”

Of course, the second half wasn’t always so easy. Down by three after the intermission, the Crimson surrendered 20 points in less than six minutes, including all 11 that standout Big Green point guard Angie Soriaga scored during the game.

“She’s very well-rounded, she can shoot, she can penetrate, and she passes well,” Delaney-Smith said. “She’s a good player.”

Morrison, the Ivies’ second-leading scorer at more than 15 points per game, was harassed by Harvard’s defense throughout the game. She still finished with 13 points and 14 boards.

In the end, it was a fitting regular-season finale. Harvard lost at Dartmouth on Jan. 8 by three points, and prevailed last night at home by three.

Up next: a Saturday afternoon rematch at Brown University’s Pizzitola Center with the co-champs to decide who will represent the Ivy League in the NCAA Tournament.

A rally bus will take Crimson fans down to Providence.

“I’d just like to say,” laughed McCaffery after the game, glancing towards the emptying bleachers, “they should all sign up.”

“It made all the difference,” she said.

—Staff writer Alex McPhillips can be reached at rmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.