CUNNING COMMENTARY: Crimson Can't Be Jinxed in Title Run

I don’t believe in jinxes.

Last September, as I watched Red Sox rookie Clay Bucholz spin a no-hitter against Baltimore, the Orioles fan by my side did her valiant best to halt the course of events. While I attempted to ignore the steadfast “0” in the Baltimore hit column, she took every opportunity to point it out.

A short time later, Bucholz’s teammates hoisted him in the air to celebrate the no-hitter, and my friend went home—as always—a shamed Orioles fan. I was convinced.

The Sports Illustrated cover jinx? Please. Ten days after the magazine featured Eli Manning on its cover, the little brother overcame a brutal postseason history to win the Most Valuable Player award in the Giants’ Super Bowl win.

So the Harvard women’s basketball team will have to excuse me for pointing out the déjà vu I’m feeling as I watch it put together a season quite similar to its Ivy title run a year ago.

Some will say I’m jinxing the team as it looks for its third straight weekend sweep, but I’ll know better: as the defending champions sit in first place in February, the Ancient Eight title is theirs to lose.

The 2007 Ivy champs dropped a road contest to Yale in late January before running the table in its remaining league slate a year ago.

Lack of focus or rustiness after the three-week exam layoff, you might say, or maybe just underestimation of a Bulldogs team unexpected to contend in the league that season.

At the time, it could have seemed as though Harvard’s two-win pre-Ivy record was rearing its ugly head—maybe this young Crimson team was simply another year away, and couldn’t compete with the usual Ancient Eight suspects.

Whatever the reason, Harvard snapped into shape after the Yale loss and didn’t lose again until the first round of the NCAA tournament.

In between its two losses came 12 straight Ivy wins, including sweet revenge against Yale at home and an 18-point blowout of rival Dartmouth in its final regular-season game.

While I can’t predict the future, I detect a familiar pattern in this year’s blossoming campaign. The 2008 “wakeup call,” as coach Kathy Delaney-Smith called it, came in the Crimson’s league opener against Dartmouth; it was a puzzling sight to see the Big Green celebrating at center court at Lavietes. Since that game on January 5, Harvard has reeled off five wins in a row.

The next two weeks will be crucial ones. The four victories it’s collected at home have been all well and good, but comparisons to last year’s team will become officially legitimate if the team can continue its success away from Cambridge.

The Crimson won’t have to wait long to see what it’s made of: the road stretch begins tomorrow in Ithaca against Cornell, who shares the league’s top spot with Harvard.

Night to night, the Crimson is finding a different way to win, whether it’s getting a last-minute jumper to beat Penn one day, then blowing out Princeton the next.

As I watched Harvard get out on the break and drain shot after shot in an impressive first half against the Tigers, I couldn’t help but recall the way last year’s squad succeeded by sharing the wealth: by seeing a different player shine on any given night, by giving up a good shot to find a great one, and by getting underclassmen and underappreciated players into the fold.

Structurally, this team is different from last year’s.

From start to finish in 2007, then-co-captain Christiana Lackner ’07 was an unsung hero, grabbing key rebounds at both ends and generally making the scrappy plays that make a difference in close games.

Senior Adrian Budischak is not quite as athletic or experienced, but is growing into that role a year later.

But it’s also different in that each holdover from last year’s team—and there are quite a few—is one year more experienced.

While Delaney-Smith frequently acknowledged the inexperience of her 2007 squad, she now refers the upperclassmen that lead her squad as veterans.

Power is shifting in the Ivies. Dartmouth appears to be having an off-year after losing reigning Ivy Player of the Year Ashley Taylor ’07 to graduation.

This year, new teams are joining Harvard on the scene: junior Jeomi Maduka has paced Cornell to a 5-1 start, and Yale—until suffering its second loss of the league slate to the Crimson last weekend— has been in the mix as well.

But while other teams seem to be just hitting their stride, Harvard has been in this scenario before.

In a league where any team can win on any night, the Crimson is in the best position to take the title back to Lavietes.

So if the team doesn’t repeat as Ivy champions, you might say that I jinxed it, and that it has only me to blame. But I won’t believe it.

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