November 9, 2024
Ivy League notebook: Inside Harvard’s top-25 win, Princeton’s growing pains and more
Plus, the challenge for Ivy teams in getting signature wins right away
As Harvard head coach Carrie Moore started her postgame television interview near the baseline on Thursday night, her players laid in wait at the free-throw line. And before she could even finish her first sentence, they sprung their trap, mobbing her to celebrate their 72-68 overtime win over No. 25 Indiana on the road.
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Moore paused, then turned around to hug as many of them as she could. She giddily jumped up and down with them before returning to the interview. After getting her first top-25 win at Harvard in her third season, she was somewhat lost for words, describing herself as “just happy.”
It is the fifth top-25 win for the Ivy League since fall 2021 — Princeton has three in that span and Columbia has one.
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Harvard upset Indiana on the strength of its defense, holding the Hoosiers to 34.7% shooting from the field and 16.7% from 3-point range. Three days after Harvard forced UMass into 34 turnovers — the most an Ivy League team has forced since at least 2009 — the Crimson converted 27 Indiana turnovers into 32 points.
The defense was especially stifling early as Harvard took a 16-point lead in the first half. But it also locked in late as Indiana fought to come back. With one second left in regulation, senior forward — and Indiana transfer — Mona Zarić successfully contested Indiana guard Chloe Moore-McNeil’s potential game-winning layup. Then in overtime, Harvard held Indiana to one field goal and forced five turnovers.
Under Moore, Harvard has been good but not great defensively, ranking in the 62nd percentile in points allowed per 100 possessions in 2022-23 and in the 53rd percentile last season. But ever since Moore arrived, the goal has been an Ivy League title, and her team knows it has to be elite defensively to make that happen.
“I talk to the team a lot about just the fact that the best defensive team in this league wins the championship,” Moore told reporters on Wednesday, after the win over UMass but before the win at Indiana. “And … it just fits my style. I’m from Detroit. I’m a Midwest girl. I’m gritty at the core … and so naturally, I want my team to play that way.
“I think we’ve got the group to do it, and we’ve been working on it 94 feet. [Opponents] need to feel us — that is the consistent message. … I thought [UMass] felt us from start to finish. And the goal is for, now, more teams to feel that.”
Against Indiana, Harvard senior guard Harmoni Turner led the way with 24 points on 10-for-17 shooting, six steals, four rebounds and four assists. She now has 11 steals in Harvard’s first two games. Senior forward/guard Elena Rodriguez added 15 points and five rebounds, and Zarić had 8 points and three rebounds against her former team.
While the seniors played a big role in the win, Moore also credited the team’s underclassmen for stepping up late in the game. First-year point guard Lydia Chatira started and played crucial minutes alongside first-year guard Alayna Rocco and sophomore guard Karlee White. And with 20 seconds left in regulation, Rocco drained a 3-pointer to tie the game and eventually force overtime.
Asked postgame what she was looking forward to for the rest of the season, Moore focused on the immediate term first. “I’m looking forward to a shower,” she told Big Ten Plus’ Josie Broyles. “I am hot and I am sweating.”
She continued, “I just want to keep getting better. I want to keep buying into the process, and I just want to keep coaching this group.”
While no other Ivy team has a win as big as Harvard’s yet this season, the league has gone 8-4 so far, and we’ve learned a little about every team. Here are several takeaways about what we’ve learned through Saturday’s games. Read them all or skip to one here:
- An extra challenge in the nonconference
- Brown bears down from behind the arc
- Cornell starts to find its footing
- First starts for first-years
- Columbia keeps scoring without Hsu
- Princeton feels some growing pains
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An extra challenge in the nonconference
Over the past several years, Ivy League coaches have talked about all eight teams needing to play tough nonconference schedules. That elevates the league overall and increases the chances of getting at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament. Those efforts paid off last season, as Columbia got an at-large bid after beating Villanova and Seton Hall in nonconference play and winning 21 of its last 23 games.
But, as coaches pointed out at the conference’s preseason media day on Oct. 17, getting marquee nonconference wins can be especially hard for Ivy League teams. That’s because the league doesn’t allow summer practices (except if a team takes a foreign tour), so Ivy teams are several months behind teams from other conferences when fall practices start.
“We are trying to prove ourselves in November, which is one of the hardest tasks in college basketball,” Columbia head coach Megan Griffith told reporters. “… We’re really just gelling and clicking when November rolls around, and that’s when we’re supposed to prove ourselves with these quality wins.”
“They want us to be perfect in November or December and [beat] those teams, and a lot of times, we don’t really hit our stride until February [or] March,” Moore added. “… It’s tough. We don’t have [our players] all summer, and we’re really trying to put it all together and be, again, the best version of ourselves against those guys.”
The Ivy League will have more chances for top-25 wins this season. Columbia will play in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in late November that also features No. 12 Baylor, No. 15 North Carolina and Indiana. It will also play at No. 11 Duke in December. Princeton will play Utah and Middle Tennessee, which are both receiving votes in the AP poll, in December. And three other Ivy teams have an upcoming opponent that is receiving votes.
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Brown bears down from behind the arc
Before losing to Harvard, Indiana beat Brown 82-60 on Monday in both teams’ season opener. The Hoosiers established an 18-point halftime lead, but the Bears played them nearly evenly from there. Brown responded to the loss with a 20-point win over Monmouth on Saturday.
One common denominator in the Bears’ two games so far is a willingness to shoot 3-pointers. Without starting forwards Alyssa Moreland and Ada Anamekwe, Brown’s strength is on the perimeter, and it focused in the preseason on moving the ball and creating drive-and-kick opportunities.
Against Indiana, the Bears took only 24 2-pointers and shot 11-for-36 from behind the arc. That matched their most 3-point attempts against a Division I opponent under head coach Monique LeBlanc. For comparison, over the previous three seasons, they averaged between 22 and 24 3-point attempts per game.
Though Brown wasn’t the most efficient from 3-point range on Monday, the 11 makes left Hoosiers head coach Teri Moren livid.
“It’s just unacceptable to me that we gave up 11 threes,” Moren told reporters postgame. “… That bothers me.”
Brown continued to launch from behind the arc against Monmouth, shooting 10-for-29. The Bears got their inside game going more, as senior center Gianna Aiello had a career-high 23 points on 8-for-10 shooting and 14 rebounds. But long-range shooting was still a priority, with three players each taking at least six 3-pointers.
It’s worth watching whether the Bears continue to play this way or sprinkle in more 2-pointers as the season progresses. The answer may depend in part on Moreland’s availability: She is out indefinitely, while Anamekwe will miss the entire season.
Cornell starts to find its footing
For the first time in 22 years, Cornell has a first-year head coach. The Big Red had struggled under former head coach Dayna Smith since winning their only Ivy League title in 2008, but the early results under Emily Garner have been encouraging.
Cornell opened the season on Monday with a 60-54 win at Army, which was just the second time in the past seven seasons that the Big Red have won their opener. They did it with a balanced offense, as sophomores Clarke Jackson, Azareya Kilgoe and Rachel Kaus each had at least 15 points. It was the first time in Cornell’s last 80 games against Division I opponents that three players scored at least that many. (In 38 of those games, no Cornell player reached 15 points.)
Three nights later, the Big Red led Rutgers by 5 points entering the fourth quarter before running out of steam and losing 72-61. They succeeded offensively in a different way than on Monday, as junior forward Emily Pape put the team on her back with a career-high 27 points and eight rebounds.
“They are so unselfish with the way that we play,” Garner told reporters at media day about her players. “So what we’ve really tried to do is take our strengths and create systems that really enhance each strength. …
“We do have multiple weapons. We have a lot of different spaces that we can go into that we feel like we can take advantage of. … We [will] really look to utilize that and space out that offense so that we have multiple threats, we can utilize multiple threats, and different people can step up on different days.”
If the Big Red continue to get contributions from up and down the roster, they could outperform expectations this season, both in the nonconference and in Ivy play.
First starts for first-years
Six first-year players, including four guards, started for Ivy teams this week:
- Kelsey Langston, Cornell guard
- Zeynep Ozel, Dartmouth point guard
- Olivia Austin, Dartmouth forward
- Lydia Chatira, Harvard point guard
- Katie Collins, Penn forward
- Marisa Chapman, Yale guard
It’s the second straight year that the Ivy League has had several first-year guards start games. Last season, four first-year point guards were starters in nonconference play. Lineups may change throughout the season, but the youth movement is exciting in the present and also bodes well for the future.
Chapman had a particularly impressive debut on Monday, tallying 17 points on 8-for-13 shooting, 12 rebounds, three assists, one block and one steal. The stat line — along with the athleticism and bounce Chapman showed — was reminiscent of former co-Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year Nyla McGill, who is no longer with the team for what would’ve been her senior season.
Collins also nearly had a double-double in her debut on Friday with 9 points on 4-for-5 shooting, 10 rebounds and six blocks. She stepped in for the Quakers following the graduations of forwards Jordan Obi and Floor Toonders.
Collins was “a focal point in what we did — changing shots, blocking shots, rebounding the ball, getting our fast breaks started,” Penn head coach Mike McLaughlin told The Daily Pennsylvanian postgame. “[She] played a complete full game at a high level of intensity.”
Columbia keeps scoring without Hsu
Columbia arguably got the second-best win this week, beating Providence 77-69 in overtime on Friday. Last season, Columbia blew out the Friars, who went on to finish ninth in the 11-team BIG EAST. But they are much improved this season and were picked third in the preseason BIG EAST coaches’ poll. If the Friars deliver on those expectations, the Lions’ win could have staying power.
The Lions are now 2-0, including a season-opening blowout of Stony Brook on Monday. They scored 87 points in that game despite playing for the first time without guard Abbey Hsu, who graduated last spring as the third-highest scorer in Ivy League women’s basketball history.
Over the summer, many Columbia players challenged each other to make 25,000 shots and tracked their progress in a spreadsheet. It’s paying off early in the season, as the Lions lead the Ivy League in points per game, field goal percentage and 3-point percentage in games against Division I opponents. Against Stony Brook, three Lions had at least 15 points, and sophomore guard Riley Weiss led the way against Providence with a career-high 25 on 9-for-15 shooting.
Still, Griffith has been somewhat disappointed with her team’s play so far. In her postgame interview on Monday, she called the offense “sloppy,” and she said Friday’s win was “a necessary wake-up call.” Her standards are that high because she believes this year’s team can be even better than last year’s group, which got the first NCAA Tournament berth in Columbia’s Division I history.
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Princeton feels some growing pains
Entering this season, Princeton hadn’t lost its opening game since 2016-17 — which was also the last time it didn’t win the Ivy League regular-season and tournament titles. But on Monday, Princeton fell on the road to Duquesne, 76-66.
The Tigers led by 6 points entering the fourth quarter, but they were outscored 20-4 in the final period. They shot 1-for-14 from the field and had five turnovers in that quarter.
“[We need to] make sure that we still do all the little things, like protecting the ball and really getting the right shot, so we can set everyone up,” junior guard Madison St. Rose told The Daily Princetonian afterward. “Obviously, we weren’t able to do that in the fourth quarter. … We just have to keep our foot on the gas and not let Duquesne get that momentum.”
Defense was also an issue, as the Tigers allowed Duquesne to shoot 46.6% overall and 38.7% from 3-point range. Princeton has been one of the nation’s best defensive teams since head coach Carla Berube arrived in 2019, but this year’s team is figuring out how to play without forward Ellie Mitchell, a three-time Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year who graduated last spring.
Those defensive struggles continued on Saturday, as DePaul shot 57.1% from the field in the first quarter to take a 19-14 lead. But the Tigers recovered this time, using a 10-0 run just before halftime to take the lead and then holding DePaul to 1-for-10 shooting in the third quarter. That effort gave them a comfortable 21-point win over the Blue Demons, who were picked to finish ninth in the BIG EAST.
The Tigers are still very much figuring things out on both ends, and that shouldn’t be too surprising. Along with replacing Mitchell, the Tigers also lost two more starters and program cornerstones in Kaitlyn Chen and Chet Nweke.
Offensively, St. Rose has started strong, averaging 23.0 points and 9.0 rebounds per game, but it’s not clear yet who the main scorers will be behind her. And defensively, the Tigers are still getting comfortable in new combinations.
That’s all normal for any program early in the season. It only seems unusual because Princeton has long made it look so easy.
Written by Jenn Hatfield
Jenn Hatfield has been a contributor to The Next since December 2018 and is currently the site's managing editor, Washington Mystics beat reporter and Ivy League beat reporter. Her work has also appeared at FiveThirtyEight, Her Hoop Stats, FanSided, Power Plays and Princeton Alumni Weekly.
