COACH OF THE YEAR: Hoops Legend Wins Again

As the most successful women’s basketball coach in Ivy League history, Kathy Delaney-Smith has already received her fair share of attention, and the spring of 2007 was no different. In April, the Harvard coach was named an assistant coach of the Pan American Games team, a group of young players competing in July against competition from North, Central, and South America.

A cancer survivor, Delaney-Smith was also named a co-recipient of the Gilda Radner Award, an honor that goes annually to two women most dedicated to promoting cancer awareness throughout the Boston area.

And this season, Delaney-Smith also found time to guide a young Crimson squad from an abysmal nonconference performance to a near-perfect Ivy League season and 10th league championship.

Despite Delaney-Smith’s extensive experience with Ivy competition—2007 marked her 25th season at Harvard—she knew that this go-around would be a little different. It featured a young team with no established star. It meant that every player on the team would be stepping into a new role. For a head coach, it meant that the challenges did not end with Xs and Os.

And again, despite her experience, the nonconference portion of the Crimson’s schedule brought nearly unprecedented disappointment. A 2-11 record capped off by a home loss to then-winless Northeastern in the last game before winter vacation suggested that despite its talent, Harvard didn’t have the mental focus to put together a sustained, 40-minute effort with any level of consistency.

“I’ve had years when I’ve lost,” Delaney-Smith said of the disappointing play in the nonconference schedule, “but never that many in a row. But this year, I never lost faith in this team.”

“She never changed the way she coached, from the first loss to that 11th loss,” sophomore forward Katie Rollins said. “She wasn’t changing her style. She knew that if we stuck with it, we would benefit on the other end.”

And benefit Harvard did, to the tune of a near-perfect Ivy League season—the only blemish came with a road loss to Yale after the reading and exam period break—en route to a league title and a berth in the NCAA Tournament.

The Crimson faithful that flocked to Lavietes Pavillion during the team’s winning streak saw a completely different team than the one that had struggled so mightily early on­­—a team that broke into passing lanes, ran smooth fast breaks, and was communicative on defense. But most importantly, they saw a team—a group of talented individuals, certainly, but more effective as a unit that knew the strengths and weaknesses of all its parts.

“She just kept telling us to keep fighting, and that we were losing games for specific reasons, not because we just couldn’t win,” junior guard Lindsay Hallion said. “‘Winning cures all’ was her attitude. Everything’s always easy when you’re winning, and confidence comes from winning.”

And few Harvard coaches know more about winning than Delaney-Smith, whose trip to the NCAA Tournament was her sixth with the Crimson. One of Harvard’s proudest athletic moments came in 1998, when the Crimson became the first and only No. 16 seed to beat a top-seeded team in the Big Dance.

Harvard and Delaney-Smith didn’t have the same luck in the 2007 tournament, but the No. 15 seed Crimson hung with the defending national champion Terrapins in the first half. It couldn’t keep pace with Maryland’s five returning starters down the stretch, however, in an 89-65 loss.

A disappointment, sure. But it was only a small dip on the rollercoaster ride that was Harvard’s 2007 season.

“This season, for me and for every one of my players, was the agony and the ecstasy,” Delaney-Smith said. “It’s common when you have that many disappointments to start pointing fingers, hating practice, cutting it short because it hurts too much. This team didn’t do that.”

While it was up to the players to put in the effort to bring their chemistry to the level of their talent, they made sure to give credit where credit is due.

“She brings teams together,” Rollins said. “She’s a big believer in the mental game and wouldn’t let us get in our own heads and take ourselves out of the season. We couldn’t help but have the confidence we needed.”

—Staff writer Emily W. Cunningham can be reached at ecunning@fas.harvard.edu.