Women's Basketball Downs Sacred Heart In Weekday Road Contest

The Harvard women’s basketball team overcame the challenge of a midweek road trip to extend its season winning streak to five games on Tuesday night. The Crimson (5-1) had four starters in double digits as it won all four quarters on the way to a 68-60 win over Sacred Heart.

“Any time you go on the road and you leave with a win, I think that’s a good thing,” Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said. “I always get worried about having a lot of games in a few amount of [days], so that’s a challenge for us. We didn’t start strong, which is a concern, but down the stretch we showed a lot of toughness.”

Harvard and the Pioneers (2-4) both started hot from outside the arc, combining for seven three-pointers in the first quarter. The Crimson did not rely too heavily on anyone for production, with three different players connecting on triples and three other players scoring in the period.

Sacred Heart sophomore guard Erin Storck gave the hosts their first and only lead of the second quarter early in the period, but freshman forward Jeannie Boehm and sophomore guard Madeline Raster scored Harvard’s next 10 points to settle things down before sophomore guard Sydney Skinner’s pair of threes pushed the visitors’ lead to seven. Those three were the Crimson’s top scorers on the night, with 11, 17, and 10 points, respectively.

“I think what makes us so good is that we’re so deep and that everyone is so unselfish,” co-captain Destiny Nunley said. “That really contributes to our play. Everyone is really unselfish, we all love each other, [and] we love playing for each other.”

A 10-0 run early in the second half gave Harvard its biggest lead of the night at 47-34. Raster and Boehm continued to enjoy the space left by the hosts’ active defense and converted easy buckets. Boehm grabbed 10 rebounds to go along with as many points, notching the first double-double of her collegiate career. She also blocked four shots, a new career high.

“[Jeannie] is definitely developing,” Delaney-Smith said. “To be honest, we didn’t give her the ball enough tonight in the second half.”

Senior guard/forward Hannah Kimmel would fuel a Sacred Heart resurgence, however, hitting three of her six three-point attempts on the night to help trim the lead to five late in the third period. The Harpursville, N.Y., native, averaging 16 points per game on the year, led all scorers with 23 points on 8-of-16 shooting, including 6-of-11 from outside the arc.

With the game hanging in the balance heading into the final period, the visitors needed its key players to hit big shots and that’s exactly what happened. Freshman point guard Katie Benzan, already one of the Crimson’s standout performers, hit a three before junior forward Taylor Rooks netted a layup to extend the lead to nine.The Pioneers, however, would refuse to go away quietly. A Storck three made it a four-point game with over two minutes left, but Harvard forced a turnover before a couple of missed shots by Sacred Heart allowed the visitors to see the game out at the free throw line.

The Crimson were active defensively with 10 steals and Boehm’s aforementioned paint patrol but also continued to struggle taking care of the ball. Delaney-Smith’s team turned the ball over 16 times on the night, taking its season average to 16.2 per game

“We do notice that we have a lot of turnovers,” Nunley said. “It’s because we get excited, we try the ‘feel-good pass’, the ‘thread-the-needle pass’, but we have to remember that we’re so good when he hit the extra pass or set up our offense.”

Staff writer Manav Khandelwal can be reached at manavkhandelwal@college.harvard.edu.