W. Basketball Slams Hapless Big Red

Harvard erased any memory of last season’s post-exam break debacle in Ithaca with a convincing 78-51 win over Cornell at Lavietes Pavilion Friday night.

Captain Reka Cserny poured in 30 points—including 20 in the second half—and grabbed 10 boards for her fifth double-double of the season and third in the last four games.

“The coaches have been telling me to be more physical inside,” Cserny said. “I’ve been trying to do that and take the ball inside a lot more.”

Mannering added 18 points and pulled down five rebounds, as the Crimson moved to 19-4 in Ivy home openers under coach Kathy Delaney-Smith.

“The game changed when we went inside to Kate and Reka,” Delaney-Smith said. “We went inside-out and back in again in order to force Cornell to play some defense on us.”

Junior guard Jessica Holsey recorded nine assists for the third time this season and junior guard Laura Robinson came off the bench to chip in with four more.

A layup by Big Red freshman guard Lindsay Krasna pulled Cornell (2-14, 0-3 Ivy) within 14 with just over five minutes remaining in the contest. Harvard immediately responded with a 10-0 run to push its lead to 69-45 and cruised to the 27-point victory.

The Crimson led by just eight at halftime and couldn’t shake free over the first four minutes of the second half, as Krasna nailed a jumper to bring the Big Red back within single digits, 39-31, with 16:20 left.

Krasna, a five-time Ivy League Rookie of the Week selection, led Cornell with 19 points and three steals. The Big Red, which has only three juniors and no seniors on its roster, started three sophomores and two freshmen, while four of the five bench players to see time in the contest were all rookies.

A 10-0 run by Harvard pushed the lead to 18, and the Crimson would never let Cornell within 12 over the remainder of the contest.

Despite a 20-day exam break, Harvard failed to show any signs of rust, as a three-pointer by junior forward Shana Franklin capped a 17-6 run out of the gate.

Trailing 24-14 with 6:23 left in the half, the Big Red put together an 11-4 run that spanned five minutes to pull within three. But Crimson junior forward Maureen McCaffery connected on a jumper and a trifecta in the final 1:06 before the break to give Harvard a 33-25 lead heading into the intermission.

“We started the game strong, but they just took the momentum away from us for a couple of minutes,” Cserny said.

The Crimson shot an abysmal 2-for-13 from behind the arc in the first half, dragging its field goal percentage down to 39 percent. Harvard worked the ball inside more after the break, taking just four shots from behind the arc, and shot 63 percent from the field.

“We’re a very good three-point shooting team,” Delaney-Smith said. “We took great threes in the first half, [but] we missed them all. We were a very one-dimensional team, and we gave Cornell a feeling that we shouldn’t have given them. We have to be more balanced in our attack.”

Neither side was especially efficient at holding onto the ball, as the Crimson coughed it up 20 times and Cornell lost possession a season-high 27 times.

Harvard is 24-0 against the Big Red at Lavietes Pavilion and holds a 42-9 all-time record against Cornell.

—Staff writer Michael R. James can be reached at mrjames@fas.harvard.edu