Women's Basketball Falls to Yale in Narrow 68-63 Loss

For the second time in as many games, the Harvard women’s basketball team found itself down three in the final moments on Friday night. And once again, the Crimson couldn’t come through, falling to Yale, 68-63, at Lavietes Pavilion.

With 17 seconds remaining, Bulldog junior Megan Vasquez failed to push the visitors’ lead to four as she missed the back half of a one-and-one. Crimson junior Miriam Rutzen came down with the board and pushed the ball forward to co-captain Brogan Berry, whose miss on a heavily contested shot from under the basket sealed Harvard’s third straight loss to its archrival.

“I’m really disappointed,” Crimson coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said after the game. “It was the kind of game we thought it was going to be. Our defensive breakdowns were horrible, and it was pretty deep through the team. It was inexplicable.”

Sophomore Christine Clark led Harvard (8-8, 1-1 Ivy) with 16 points, while junior Victoria Lippert contributed 15. Rutzen scored eight and brought down 11 rebounds.

But the balanced attack was ultimately not enough to overcome an equally distributed scoring night for Yale (10-7, 2-1). Three Bulldogs—Vasquez, freshman Sarah Halejian, and sophomore Janna Graf—finished in double figures and combined for seven three-pointers on the night, as the team shot 43 percent from behind the arc.

“They have great three-point shooters,” Delaney-Smith said. “You can’t go trying for steals and lunging for the ball. That’s what we were doing.”

The Crimson got off to a fast 8-0 start, but Yale rallied to take a 16-15 lead. By the end of the first half, Harvard had a five-point edge thanks to 10 points from Lippert and six from Clark.

“Our adrenaline was going; our defense was tough,” Berry said. “We had been waiting for our home opener for Ivies for a while. I wish we just could have had the same intensity from the first couple minutes of the game to the second half.”

The Bulldogs flipped the script as soon as the second half began. Four players knocked down shots from inside and out, fueling a 14-2 run that ended with the visitors leading, 38-31.

“You get in the flow of the game, and you don’t stay focused,” Berry said. “It took us too long to recognize it, and it’s something we need to be able to adjust to. When a team’s making a run, we need to work on making it stop sooner.”

Harvard’s lack of intensity also showed on the boards. Yale came down with 10 possession-saving offensive rebounds in the second period of action that proved pivotal in a hard-fought contest.

During the final 15 minutes of the game, neither team had a lead greater than six, though the Crimson only led once in the last 10 minutes.

Following a miss on the Bulldogs’ end, Berry brought the ball up the court down just one point. After passing the ball around, it ended up back in the co-captain’s hand. With 30 seconds left, Berry put up a jumper that clanged out.

Yale pulled down the rebound and furiously pushed it up court. Halejian ended up with the ball and drove in for an uncontested layup. As Halejian went up, Harvard junior Emma Golen pushed her in the back, setting up an opportunity for a three-point play. The freshman stepped to the line and immediately executed, running the Bulldogs’ lead to four and making it a two-possession game.

While Golen quickly redeemed herself by making a 15-footer six seconds later, it wasn’t enough. Vasquez made the first of a one-an-one after an intentional foul, and Berry was unable to respond on the following possession. Two more Vasquez free throws sealed the game for Yale.

The close loss came on the heels of a similar defeat to North Dakota 10 days prior. In that contest, Clark controlled the ball down three with 15 seconds remaining. She opted to take a three in transition that came up short. Harvard went on to lose, 60-57.

“It’s a very disappointing loss,” Berry said. “We had been preparing for 10 days. We knew exactly what we had to do, but we didn’t put 40 minutes of defensive effort in. It was lost in the first seven minutes of the second half, and we never got in a rhythm after that.”

—Staff writer Jacob D. H. Feldman can be reached at jacobfeldman@college.harvard.edu.