Women's Basketball Survives Late Scare in 67-57 Win

It was a familiar scenario for the Harvard women’s basketball team. With a little over five minutes remaining in the game, the Crimson found its lead cut to only one point and the ball in the hands of Cornell’s fast break.

But Harvard (10-8, 3-1 Ivy) put the past in the past and managed to retake a comfortable lead, pulling out the victory over the Big Red (8-10, 2-2), 67-57, Friday night at Newman Arena in Ithaca, N.Y.

Sophomore Christine Clark had a big night for Harvard, tallying 23 points, six rebounds, and five steals.

For a moment, though, it appeared that this game might end the same way that last week’s matchup versus Yale did—a contest in which the Crimson gave up a late advantage, leading to its first league loss of the season.

So when Cornell’s Stephanie Long hit a shot from beyond the arc to bring the home team within one, 54-53, it is no mystery what was going through the heads of Harvard’s players and coaches.

But this time, thanks to nine points from Clark in the last 4:13, the Crimson went on a 13-4 run and put the Big Red—and its own late-game meltdowns—to bed.

“I think overall, the game was definitely a little shaky for us,” co-captain Brogan Berry said. “It was a little up and down. But we pulled it together towards the very end and proved that we can definitely play in the Ivy League.”

After a back-and-forth first half, which resulted in a tie game at halftime, the beginning of the second half provided more of the same. Harvard jumped out to an 11-point lead at the start of the frame only to have Cornell rebound and cut the lead down to one.

It was Clark who initially stopped the bleeding for the Crimson at this point, going baseline-to-baseline after a steal led to a lay-up. And after a two-minute no-scoring lull, Clark once again increased Harvard’s lead as she shot up a trey of her own.

From then on, it was just a matter of hitting free throws for the Crimson, a team that, before Friday night, shot 76.5 percent from the charity stripe.

First up to the line was Berry after she drew a foul on the Big Red’s Spencer Lane. Berry hit both shots, earning her 11th and 12th points of the game.

Following Berry’s makes, Cornell was unable to score and was once again forced to foul. This time, Clark was sent to the line, and she promptly sank both attempts. Clark was followed by junior Emma Golen, who made Harvard’s sixth and seven consecutive free throws and extended its lead to 12, capping off an 11-0 run for Harvard.

Taylor Flynn and Kristina Danielak hit two straight buckets for the Big Red, but those were its last scratches on the scoreboard. A foul on the other end sent Clark back to the line, and she sealed the game, 67-57.

“We’ve been working a lot on last-second shots and scenarios in practice,” Berry explained. “That has really given us a lot of confidence going into these close games that we know what to do and shows that we’re thinking about how to win the game both mentally and physically.”

Junior Miriam Rutzen agreed with her co-captain, emphasizing the importance of numerous players and their contributions down the stretch.

“I think a lot of different individual players stepped up with big plays,” Rutzen said. “[Berry] really handled the pressure with ball-handling, Clark had some really big shots, and the forwards had a lot of big rebounds, but there wasn’t one specific play. It was just a matter of consistency and making sure we finished our shots and finished our rebounds.”

Along with its timely free throws, the Crimson defense was an integral part of its success down the stretch. In the last five minutes of the game, Harvard held its opponents to only four points, a statistic that goes against the grain of its recent late-game defensive lapses.

“We definitely have turned our focus to defense in the second half of the season,” Berry said. “We know how important defensive stops are and realized that they aren’t important just for defense, but that our offense also springs from our defense. That’s what we focused on late in this game.”

Neither the Crimson nor Cornell shot the ball well from the field, only managing to put up percentages of only 39 and 38, respectively. Despite its woes, Harvard finished off the game shooting 80 percent from the line.

But for the Crimson, it ultimately all came down to some basic fundamentals.

“Defense and rebounding are going to win games for us,” Rutzen explained. “That has been our mentality all year, and we’re just trying to bring that to fruition every game. In [Friday’s game], that took a little longer than preferred, but we ended up playing good defense and pulling away with it—it was definitely a good win.”

—Staff writer Juliet Spies-Gans can be reached at jspiesgans@college.harvard.edu.