SEASON RECAP: Inexperience Dashes Crimson’s Title Hopes

It was a season of youth and inexperience, of ups and downs, and more often than not, the Harvard women’s basketball team came up short.

A freshman- and sophomore-laden lineup fell shy in its bid for the Crimson’s second consecutive Ivy League title, as Harvard (12-15, 8-6 Ivy) spent the season struggling to put together a 40-minute offensive effort.

The Crimson’s slow starts and untimely miscues sullied a late run for the Ivy title, leaving Harvard out of the hunt by the fifth week of league play.

“I’m not quite used to this,” said coach Kathy Delaney-Smith after a win over Penn at home. “I really haven’t had very many years where we weren’t in the title hunt. It’s very odd to me. We’ve never been out of it this early, and it makes me hungrier for next year.”

Two crushing defeats to Brown and a pair of slow starts against Princeton left the Crimson on the outside looking in when Dartmouth and the Tigers squared off for the Ivy League crown in March.

The combination of slow starts and game-long offensive inconsistency made for a frustrating Ivy run for a team accustomed to playing in March.

“From the beginning of the season we had that trouble in the first half,” freshman guard Emily Tay said. “We’ve always waited to be down by 10 or 15 before we decide to come back and do something. We’re used to it, but it’s not good.”

The season opener provided an augur for a trend that would mark the whole season: against then-No. 18 DePaul on Nov. 18, Harvard found itself in an insurmountable 47-18 deficit at the half.

At Virginia a few weeks later, the Crimson faced a 31-22 halftime hole in Charlottesville, and not even the momentum of a sustained second half run could bring Harvard back after a stagnant first half.

“We’ve tried to iron [the slow starts] out,” said Delaney-Smith after the conclusion of the Ivy season. “I guess people would say that’s what an inexperienced team does. If you open up any sports psychology books, they’re going to say that’s what you get with young players—and I have an exceptional amount of young players.”

It was departing senior guard Laura Robinson who provided the most offensive consistency for a continually unpredictable Harvard squad.

Robinson averaged just over nine points per game, but it was her late-game heroics in the final 3:40 that secured a 78-69 win over Cornell on March 3.

Robinson, who scored 23 points in an 80-71 home win over the Big Red, and co-captain Maureen McCaffery were the key veterans on a youthful squad with nine freshmen and sophomores.

Youth both aided and ailed the Crimson, which trailed at the half in each of its six Ivy losses. Over that stretch, Harvard trailed by an average of eight points going into the second frame.

A starting lineup that returned just one starter from 2004-2005—co-captain Jess Holsey missed almost all of the Ivy season with a hand injury and a concussion—forced Delaney-Smith to play many lineups with two to three freshmen.

But Harvard’s youth was often more positive than negative, as freshman Katie Rollins asserted herself as one of the league’s premier post players.

Rollins led the team in scoring with 10.8 points per game, while fellow freshman Emily Tay was the team’s third-leading scorer with an average of 8.3 points per contest.

An explosive game against Columbia in March—Tay netted 24 points, while Rollins poured in 20 of her own—gave Delaney-Smith much to look forward to over the next three seasons. Another rookie, guard Niki Finelli, proved herself as one of Harvard’s most viable threats beyond the arc.

Add in starting sophomore point guard Lindsay Hallion, who missed her freshman season with a torn ACL, and the Crimson played young all season long.

“I’ve never in my 24 years here played this many young kids so much,” Delaney-Smith said. “This will be an entirely different team next year just because they played.”

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