Ivy Title Within Crimson’s Reach After Sweep

From friends to parents, football players to sorority sisters, fans of all shapes, sizes, and decibel levels made the trek across the Charles Saturday night to see a first-place showdown between the Harvard and Cornell women’s basketball teams.

The game lived up to the hype—screaming fans and countless lead changes created a do-or-die atmosphere—and, for good measure, delivered a win for the home team. On Senior Night at Lavietes Pavilion, co-captains Lindsay Hallion and Jessica Knox each drilled a pair of free throws with under 30 seconds to play to seal a 51-48 nail-biter that catapulted the Crimson (17-9, 10-2 Ivy) over the Big Red (17-8, 9-3) into sole possession of first place in the Ivy League standings.

Leading by one with 34 seconds to play, Hallion was called for a reach-in foul as she attempted to poke the ball away from Cornell’s Moina Snyder at the three-point line.

After Snyder missed the front end of a 1-and-1, the ball wound up in Hallion’s hands and the Big Red decided it had no choice but to foul.

The crowd erupted as Hallion calmly sank both freebies to give the Crimson a three-point lead. After a Snyder layup with four seconds to play, Knox followed suit with two free throws to make it official.

“You put yourself in that situation a million times as a kid practicing free throws—‘This is for the game,’” Hallion said. “I think this was the biggest game of my life, so those were probably the biggest free throws.”

After shooting poorly from the field in the first half, Harvard came out of the locker room and found its touch. A three-pointer from Knox at 15:29 gave the Crimson its first lead of the game, starting a stretch of ties and lead changes that would last the rest of the game. Harvard fans responded to each twist and turn with raucous cheers, none louder than when a no-look pass from junior guard Emily Tay at the three-point line found Hallion alone under the basket. Hallion’s easy lay-in tied the game at 40 with just under eight minutes to play.

Cornell responded at every turn, but was without its go-to-weapon down the stretch. As the crowds filtered into Lavietes, game time brought a welcome surprise for the Crimson faithful—the Big Red’s leading scorer, junior forward Jeomi Maduka, had remained in Ithaca to compete in the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships in track and field in lieu of traveling to Cambridge.

“She brings something to the court that no one else does in terms of her athleticism,” Hallion said. “Our forwards were able to play a more traditional defense than they would have if she had been on the court.”

With Maduka out, Cornell’s focus shifted to guard play and particularly to three-point shooting—the dagger that doomed Harvard two weeks ago in Ithaca.

The Big Red shot just 28 percent from beyond the arc for the night, but sophomore Lauren Benson’s gutsy trey cut Harvard’s lead to one with just under two to play.

The first half lacked the back-and-forth drama that came later on, as the Crimson struggled to find offensive rhythm out of the gate. Cornell looked a step too quick for Harvard, and pushed a frenzied pace en route to an eight-point lead—the largest margin either team would enjoy all night. Big-game jitters seemed to affect the Crimson, which failed to convert easy opportunities around the basket early on.

“We were just trying to settle it down—it was a matter of nerves,” Knox said. “We tried to focus on defense—that’s where all our offense starts.”

While Harvard got back into the game and faced just a four-point deficit at the break, the halftime stats still weren’t pretty: Hallion shined with a game-high 10 points, but neither Tay nor junior Niki Finelli had managed to find the bottom of the bucket.

“Some of my top scorers were off, so it came down to senior pride, rebounding and defense,” said Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith. “With a few exceptions, our defense was exactly what we wanted it to be.”

Senior pride was indeed the theme of the night, from the pregame ceremonies for Hallion, Knox, and Adrian Budischak to Knox’s two finishing touches from the free throw line.

These clutch veteran performances put Harvard right where it has been before, as well as where it expects it will be again—at the top of the Ivy League standings. With only two games remaining next weekend away at Brown and Yale, the Crimson controls its own destiny—if it wins both of the games, it will once again represent the Ancient Eight in the NCAA postseason tournament.

“I could see my senior class out there, and I could see my underclassmen trying hard, sometimes too hard, for them,” Delaney-Smith added. “They just love this senior class.”

—Staff writer Emily W. Cunningham can be reached at ecunning@fas.harvard.edu.