Tay’s Jumper Rescues Crimson Against Penn

All aboard the Tay Train.

That might well become the motto of the Harvard women’s basketball team, which saw its repeat Ivy Title bid hang precipitously in the balance in an unlikely nail-biter with woeful Penn (3-15, 0-3 Ivy) on Friday night.

Then junior guard Emily Tay, who shredded the Quakers’ defense all night, found one last, all-important hole and buried a jumper with 14 ticks left to seal the Crimson’s furious 63-62 comeback win over visiting Penn.

Tay’s last-minute heroics—made possible after a Lindsay Hallion steal off an inbounds pass with 26 seconds left—gave Harvard (10-8, 3-1 Ivy) its only lead of the night.

“It’s actually the first [game winner] in my entire life,” Tay said. “I’m going to take it.”

And with that one-point cushion, the Crimson jumped on board the Tay Train and rode out of Lavietes Pavilion with a season-saving win over the stunned Quakers.

“Tay Train?” Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said. “I like that. Make that stick. She was just tremendous at both ends of the floor. She’s shooting unbelievably well, and when she took a quick shot in the offense and came running over to the bench and said, ‘Was that an awful shot?’ And I said, ‘No, honey. Nothing that comes out of your hands is awful.’”

Tay led all scorers with 21 points, finishing 9-of-18 from the floor and adding nine rebounds in the winning effort. Hallion added 12 points for the Crimson, while Penn’s Carrie Biemer and Anca Popovici each had 14.

After nailing the eventual game-winner, Tay had to clamp down on defense for the last 14 seconds.

Penn called three timeouts during the game’s last possession, deciding finally on an inbounds play under the basket with three seconds left. The pass floated long, and—fittingly—Tay scooped it up and ran the clock out before throwing the ball triumphantly in the air.

“[I was thinking] ‘Sprint as fast as you can and run away from the girl,’” Tay said of her game-clinching steal.

The Quakers put together their finest game of the season, paced by hot perimeter shooting from Biemer and guard Kim Adams. Biemer and Adams combined for five three pointers, and Penn netted eight overall to keep an up-and-down Harvard squad at bay.

But despite sloppy moments in the first half, the Crimson never fell out of contention completely.

An Emma Markley layup knotted the game at 44-44 with 10:13 remaining in the half, and a crowd left stunned by a feisty Penn squad finally began to stir.

But then Penn, as it had done all night, fought back from behind the arc.

The Quakers buried three consecutive treys in just under two minutes to take a 53-44 lead with just over eight minutes remaining in the game.

“When you’re the underdog, it’s easy to let that sucker launch,” Delaney-Smith said. “And they kept launching it. It’s a little bit harder to keep launching threes when you’re supposed to win by a lot.”

Harvard clawed back in it thanks to Tay, who found senior forward Adrian Budischak open for a jumper and then kept it going with a silky jump shot from the left baseline to cut the lead to 53-48.

Penn widened the gap to seven on a Sarah Bucar jumper with 2:54 remaining, before a Niki Finelli three-pointer and a jumper from Hallion cut it to 60-58 with 1:20 left.

After a quick basket for the Quakers, Hallion found a cutting Finelli at the top of the key, and Finelli buried her second consecutive triple to trim the Penn lead to one and set up Tay’s final shot.

“Emily was on fire the whole game,” Finelli said. “When that ball went up, I said, ‘It’s going in.’ But Penn put up such a good fight. It was a heartbreaker for them but great for us.”

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