BASKETBALL '06: Young and Restless

By mid-February last season, Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith felt a little out of place.

The Crimson fell to 3-3 in Ivy League play after a 70-55 defeat at Princeton, a loss that all but took Harvard out of the Ivy title hunt before the second round of league competition even began.

“I’m not quite used to this,” said Delaney-Smith in February. “I really haven’t had very many years where we weren’t in the title hunt. It’s very odd to me.”

Last season—with its injuries and inconsistencies—was hardly a typical year for Delaney-Smith, who has won nine Ivy League titles in her 24 seasons as Harvard’s head coach, most recently in 2003 and 2005. The Crimson stumbled out of the gate in its Ivy opener against Dartmouth, losing 91-76 to the eventual league champions and beginning a frustrating trend of first-half lethargy that would mar the Ivy season.

By the end of the year, Harvard had lost its star guard and co-captain Jessica Holsey ’06 to a season-ending concussion and given up a game-winning three-pointer to Brown with 0.4 seconds left. Worst of all, Harvard ended the season fourth in the Ivy League standings—hardly a customary finish for one of Delaney-Smith’s teams.

“It felt really weird, and it was a really hard experience not to have your destiny in your own hands,” junior guard Lindsay Hallion said. “Especially when you feel like you should win and you feel like you have the skills to beat people.”

Youth—Delaney-Smith started a freshman and a sophomore and brought three more rookies off the bench—made for early growing pains for the Crimson. But it was injuries that kept the team off the floor and made Delaney-Smith scramble for a consistent starting and bench rotation. Holsey, then-sophomore Adrian Budischak, and then-freshmen Liz Tindal, Katie Rollins, and Niki Finelli missed a combined 69 games last year.

“We didn’t want last year to be a transition year,” Delaney-Smith said. “We thought we had a combination of some veteran seniors and a young, very talented [freshman] class, and we knew a lot of them would be able to play right away. But injuries were probably the biggest factor.”

Harvard finished 12-15—just Delaney-Smith’s fourth under-.500 finish since 1994. Dartmouth went dancing again, and Harvard began a long off-season.

And Delaney-Smith, for one, thinks it paid off. Harvard’s five freshmen of a year ago are entering their second season together, and Hallion played in all 27 games after missing 2004-2005 with a torn ACL.

The Crimson lost just two starters to graduation last year and returns three of its five leading scorers in Hallion, Rollins, and sophomore guard Emily Tay. Hallion’s athleticism and perimter savvy and Rollins and Tay’s late season offensive explosions gave the league a glimpse of Harvard’s future.

Tindal, who missed all of last season with a knee injury, will be one of four bonafide low-post threats for Harvard, and Delaney-Smith expects 6’7 center Emma Moretzsohn to dominate the low block in her sophomore campaign.

“These are hands-down the best [low-post players] who have ever played at Harvard under my coaching,” Delaney-Smith said. “They’re all power inside players. You’re going to have to defend that.”

A bevy of talent and size in the post gives Delaney-Smith options she didn’t have even two years ago, when the Crimson was thin in the middle and standout forward Reka Cserny ’05 preferred playing outside of the paint. The combination of low-post finesse and speedy perimeter play—as well as quality outside shooting—could make Harvard the most formidable team in the Ivy League.

This year’s Harvard squad also inherits an unpredictable, unknown Ivy League recovering from the graduation of many of its marquee players. Dartmouth’s nucleus that brought the squad back-to-back Ivy titles graduated in 2006, and Brown lost 2005-2006 Ivy Player of the Year Sarah Hayes. Princeton, which lost in the Ivy playoff game to Dartmouth last season, graduated arguably the league’s best low-post player in Becky Brown.

The Crimson lost six times in Ivy competition last year—twice each to Dartmouth, Brown, and Princeton. The Big Green returns center Elise Morrison, who missed all but three games last season with a foot injury and is the best Ivy matchup Harvard will face in the low post this year. Both Princeton and Brown will have trouble containing the Crimson on the low block, with Moretzsohn posing a particularly difficult challenge for shorter defenders.

Most crucial, however, is whether Harvard can overcome the offensive inconsistency that doomed the Crimson in January and February of last year. Harvard had the talent to stay atop the Ivy heap last year, but never managed to put together two halves of solid basketball against the league’s premiere competition. In the six games against Dartmouth, Brown, and Princeton, Harvard was outscored in the first half 220-169 and never led at the break.

“[Last year] is a huge motivation for us this season,” Hallion said. “Last year we knew that we were very talented and none of our real goals came to fruition. Having that experience really makes you not take what you have for granted and really makes you focus on what you can do to not let your chances slip away.”

The year of experience—and the memory of a 2006 season gone awry—will be indispensable to the Crimson’s campaign in 2006-2007.

And with the graduation of last year’s senior class—including breakout guard Laura Robinson—this year’s roster is without a single player with NCAA tournament experience. That doesn’t happen often in Laivetes Pavilion, but the Crimson has not gone dancing since 2003—when co-captains Kyle Dalton and Christiana Lackner were seniors in high school.

“That just makes us hungry, because it’s not like we can talk about it,” Hallion said. “We realize that there are only so many chances, and we can’t let years where we have the talent to get things done go by without doing them.”

—Staff writer Aidan E. Tait can be reached at atait@fas.harvard.edu.