Women's Basketball Splits Pair of Road Contests

While a basketball game is 40 minutes long, the Harvard women’s basketball team have set the tempo for the outcome of its games in the first few.

It’s a sentiment the whole team has echoed: if the Crimson (10-12, 3-5 Ivy) doesn’t come out strong, the team struggles. That pattern continued this weekend. In a weekend road trip to New York, Harvard lost to Columbia (7-14, 1-6) Friday night, 59-43. However, the women were able to turn things around on Saturday night when they defeated Cornell (14-8, 5-3) by a score of 61-57.

HARVARD 61, CORNELL 57

Coming off of a tough loss to the Lions, the Crimson decided to shake things up.

“We actually changed everything,” junior forward AnnMarie Healy said. “[Coach] Kathy [Delaney-Smith] rewrote our whole pregame rituals and our pregame warm up and we actually adjusted everything, especially how we prepared for the game.”

“It was great to be able to see our team persevere, “ Healy continued. “Cornell is a really great team who has done really well in the Ivy League so it was good to kind of give it to them and come out with a win.”

In the end, these changes appeared to make a difference. Harvard came out strong, going on an 8-0 run to start the contest, which set the pace for the rest of the match.

Though the Big Red would battle back and go on a 13-3 run, the Crimson did not back down and ended the half down by only four.

The back-and-forth scoring continued in the second half before junior guard Kit Metoyer sparked a late 14-3 Harvard run. Metoyer, who recently joined the starting lineup, had a season-high 12 points in the win.

The run gave the Crimson a cushion down the stretch, something the team has not had often this season. Harvard has had seven games this season that have ended within four points, and has gone 4-3 in those contests.

“In our other close games we are usually the people that are down in the last few minutes,” Healy said. It’s nice to be able to feel comfortable and feel that we were able to control the game in a more calm setting.”

The Crimson’s advantage in the post continued, as Harvard outscored Cornell in the paint 28-13. Senior forward Erin McDonnell led the charge with 17 points.

“We just played without regard to the circumstance,” senior forward Temi Fagbenle said. “We didn’t try not to lose, we didn’t try to win, we just tried to play Harvard basketball and not think of the outcome. It wasn’t perfect by any means, we still had a lot of mistakes and didn’t even play to our full potential but we were happy to come out with the win.”

COLUMBIA 59, HARVARD 43

In the first nine minutes of Friday’s contest, to say that the Crimson struggled would be an understatement, Fagbenle said. The Lions, who were winless in the Ivy League prior to Friday night, went on a 20-4 run to put Harvard out of reach early on.

“We basically beat ourselves,” Fagbenle said.

Turnovers plagued the Crimson, as it gave away the ball 13 times in the first period of action. However, Columbia was unable to take advantage and had 10 points off of turnovers in the entire game.

Besides struggling to hold on the ball, Harvard struggled to put the ball in the net. The Crimson shot only 22.4 percent from the field over the course of the game, with McDonnell leading the team in scoring with just 10 points.

The team fared better on the defensive end, holding the Lions to just 34 percent shooting and matching Columbia in rebounds with 46 apiece, but its poor offensive play prevented Harvard from taking advantage of Columbia’s similarly poor shooting.

The Crimson continues its Ancient Eight stretch of the season next weekend, where the team is once again on the road to face Penn and Princeton. Harvard will look to win its first consecutive Ivy League contests as it has yet to string together multiple conference wins.