BASKETBALL '08 SUPPLEMENT: Back for More

Even though it is the reigning Ivy League champion, the Harvard women’s basketball team is hungry for more. The team ended last year with its second consecutive Ancient Eight title, but was forced to share the crown with Dartmouth and Cornell. Now the Crimson is looking for revenge after falling to Dartmouth as part of the three-team playoff and missing out on the Big Dance.

“In the end, we let a team not as good as us beat us,” senior forward Katie Rollins says. “It was ours to win, and we let someone take that away from us. It gives you drive, motivation to push yourself in summer workouts, fall preseason, and once you’ve done everything that you can do to get yourself ready for the new season, you put the past behind you. It’s a new season.”

Named the No. 1 team in the Ivies in the preseason media poll, Harvard is not willing to settle for tying for first place. This season, it wants to be the undisputed best team in the Ivy League.

This motivation seems to have already affected the Crimson, forcing the players to push themselves to be better than ever. Without a single junior on the roster and the majority of the team being composed of underclassmen, co-captains Niki Finelli and Emily Tay and classmates Rollins and Emma Moretzsohn bring most of the experience.

“It’s hard, because it’s our team now,” Tay says. “There aren’t other teammates for us to look at. When we’re in pressure situations, the team looks at us, so we have that pressure and it just makes it more our team.”

“Just given our record and the way that our team has played, there’s expectations and pressure to continue with that success,” Finelli adds. “But what’s special about the fact that we consider this our season is that we don’t reflect on what’s happened in the past.”

It is not just up to the seniors to shoulder the burden of the entire team. While they provide the backbone that defines the team, it is the returning sophomores and up-and-coming freshmen that need to step into the limelight—and fast—if the Crimson wishes to defend its Ivy League title and claim a spot in the NCAA tournament as it did two seasons ago.

“[The freshmen and sophomores] are doing a great job,” Finelli says. “It’s funny, because we refer to ourselves as a veteran team when the majority is underclassmen. They’re doing a great job to understand the system, really stepping up and playing outside of themselves. Each person now sees herself as having an integral role in our team, taking pride in that, and trying to do the best they can.”

It seems as though the underclassmen have already made a lasting impression on Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith.

“We don’t have a junior class, and the sophomores are just different than any other class I’ve had,” Delaney-Smith says. “They have toughness and a drive that last year was not reined in and was all over the map, and now it’s reined in. It just adds to the strength of this team. The sophomore class now is far healthier and one year older and extremely talented.”

This health, experience, and talent will come in handy for Harvard as it seeks to run a new system. Rather than basing its offense on set plays, the Crimson has adopted a new strategy of reading the defense and letting the players’ intuition do the work. With the styles of players such as Tay, sophomore forward Emma Markley, and freshman point guard Brogan Berry, Delaney-Smith wants to use this simple offense to let them showcase their abilities and just play.

The system will be tested early, with several non-conference games of note crowding a busy early slate for the Crimson. These include two matchups in the Women of Troy Basketball Classic, where Harvard will face UC Santa Barbara and tournament host USC. As always, this year’s schedule is highlighted by the competitiveness of the Ivy League, with two games apiece against fellow Ivy League co-champions Dartmouth and Cornell and rival Yale.

“As far as the Ivies go, I know we’re frustrated with Cornell,” Rollins says. “But I’m probably the angriest at Yale and most excited to play them, because it made their season to beat us at the end of last year and take our sole championship away from us.

“In the Ivy League, every game matters, every team ends up beating every team,” she adds. “You’re never searching for a reason to get motivated for an Ivy game. There’s always a reason.”

On the eve of its first game, the Crimson seems all set to take the Ivy League by storm. With new additions to its roster and established presences leading the team, Harvard is ready to defend its title and finish what last year’s ending left incomplete.

“I loved how our athletes came back this year,” Delaney-Smith says. “I think that their summer work really, really showed. So even early in the season right now we see that in practices, that there’s a lot that the league did not see last year.

“It’s going to be a different Harvard.”