February 17, 2025
‘You got to play fearless’: How Harvard became the first Ivy League team to solve Columbia this season
By The Next
It had a lot to do with mentality for the Crimson, who’d been ‘exposed’ in the teams’ first meeting
By Jenn Hatfield
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NEW YORK — After Harvard suffered a disappointing home loss to Columbia on Jan. 31, head coach Carrie Moore wanted more from her team. Specifically, she needed her team to “get back to the process of handling hard better,” borrowing a mantra from Duke head coach Kara Lawson.
On Sunday, Harvard arrived at Levien Gymnasium in New York for the rematch wearing crimson warmup shirts that said, “No excuses. No regrets.”
In the rematch, the Crimson handled the challenges that came their way better and left with no regrets, getting a 60-54 win that was enormous for the program and for the Ivy League standings. Harvard improved to 19-3 overall and 8-2 in conference play and ended Columbia’s unbeaten run atop the league.
For Columbia, which fell to 18-5 overall and 9-1 in conference play, the loss snapped an 11-game winning streak, which was tied for the longest in program history. The Lions had also won 19 straight Ivy League games, 20 straight home games, and 11 of their last 12 games against Harvard.
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In the first matchup this season, the Lions had scored 80 points on a Harvard team that allowed the fewest points per game of any Division I team. They leaned into playing on the road with the crowd against them. They shot 50% from the field and forced 18 turnovers against a Crimson team that’s known for disrupting opponents with full-court pressure.
“We were thriving and grooving,” Columbia head coach Megan Griffith told reporters on Tuesday.
“I think we were exposed. I think I was exposed,” Moore told reporters on Wednesday.
Sunday’s rematch came in front of a sellout crowd of 2,267, and the fans brought energy from the start despite a cold rain outside and a noon tipoff inside. In a gym that has seen plenty of electric crowds in recent years, it was arguably one of the best ever, juiced by Columbia and Harvard’s heated rivalry and by it being Alumnae Weekend.
Both teams pressed each other full-court all game, which further fueled the raucous atmosphere. Players forced lots of jump balls, then refused to let go of the ball after the whistle until a referee took it from them. They repeatedly tumbled out of bounds and even crashed into a barrier on the sideline. By the end, Moore was hoarse, her voice dipping in and out during her postgame press conference. And Griffith was livid, at the result and at how her team played.
Unlike the first matchup, Harvard’s defense imposed its will from the start on Sunday, forcing an immediate turnover after Columbia won the opening tip. The Harvard press went all-out after the coaching staff had decided to be less aggressive in the first matchup, wary of Columbia’s many shooters and ball-handlers. Columbia shot just 1-for-13 from the field in the first quarter on Sunday and committed six turnovers, yet it only trailed 14-9.
“We’ve won a lot of huge games because of our press,” Harvard senior guard Harmoni Turner told reporters postgame. “And honestly, I take it back to the first couple of weeks of school. We didn’t even touch a basketball because we were working on defense. And I feel like we capitalized off of that, and we were super intentional with our defense. And we allow that to build our offense up and our confidence up.”
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Harvard continued to lead throughout the second quarter and took a 19-16 lead into halftime. Columbia’s offense was still sputtering, but its defense forced 14 Harvard turnovers.
Out of halftime, after Harvard got four offensive rebounds on the first possession but couldn’t score, Columbia ripped off a 12-0 run. Sophomore guard Riley Weiss hit two 3-pointers, senior guard Cecelia Collins hit one and senior guard Kitty Henderson made an and-one to give the Lions a 28-19 lead.
That was the Lions’ largest lead of the game, and Harvard spent much of the third quarter trying to cut into it. With about a minute left, senior guard/forward Elena Rodriguez single-handedly beat Columbia’s transition defense by throwing a three-quarter-court baseball pass to sophomore forward Abigail Wright for a layup.
“It’s like, ‘No, no — OK!’” Moore said to describe her reaction.
That basket cut Columbia’s lead to 2 points, and it could’ve opened the floodgates for an extended Harvard run. Instead, Collins hit a 3-pointer and gave a slight shrug as the gym erupted, and first-year guard Mia Broom made another with five seconds left in the quarter to give Columbia a 43-37 lead.
“Those two big shots — those were really great shots that they took — we didn’t allow that to startle us,” Turner said about Harvard’s mindset entering the fourth quarter. “And I feel like in the past, that’s kind of gotten a hold of us, but we’ve learned that lesson. And we were like … ‘They had their time. Now it’s time for us to punch back.’”
The Crimson scored the first nine points of the fourth quarter and took the lead for good with 8:27 left. They stretched it to as many as seven, shooting 70% in the fourth quarter to Columbia’s 27%.
“I don’t know what happened between the third and the fourth,” a still-heated Griffith said postgame. “… We lost trust, I think, when we looked up and we were like, ‘Oh, we’re down five. We’re down seven.’”
Through it all, Turner was everywhere. She had a major role in breaking Columbia’s press by weaving through defenders near midcourt and being a passing option downcourt. She was often the first to the ball in the air and on the ground, and she carried the scoring for Harvard. Arguably the favorite for Ivy League Player of the Year, she finished with a game-high 22 points, eight rebounds, seven assists, four steals, and just two turnovers in 38 minutes.
“She’s obviously very slippery,” Griffith said. “She’s great with the ball. She can make a lot of quick decisions, changes levels well, changes speeds. … We never got in front of her. We were just chasing her around, and you can’t have two or three people doing that.”
Ten of Turner’s points came in the fourth quarter, and she also made crucial defensive plays in the final minute. With Harvard up 6 with 12 seconds left, Columbia called timeout to draw up a play. But Turner stole the inbounds pass and dribbled until she got fouled. Behind her, junior guard Saniyah Glenn-Bello put both fists in the air as she saw Turner control possession.
The same scenario unfolded with three seconds left: Columbia, down by 6, took a timeout to draw up a play, but Turner got a hand on the ball to extinguish Columbia’s last gasp.
“For some reason, we kind of had that intuition that they were going to pass it in my general area,” Turner said about both possessions. “And I just anticipated the pass and anticipated the play, and we got a big, huge stop.”
“We didn’t deserve to win that game … because in those moments, all you need is certainty,” Griffith said. “And in those moments, we had a lot of uncertainty today — just ball insecurity, ball indecisiveness.”
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For both teams, mentality was key to the result. After Harvard lost to Princeton, the six-time defending Ivy League regular-season champion, on Jan. 11, Moore said her team needed to fully believe it could win.
“That’s a very different Princeton team [than in the past], but it still says Princeton across their chest,” Moore said on Jan. 15. “And … that’s a mental hurdle that we must get over. We must essentially give ourselves permission to be great in that moment against this basketball team, to go out and do what we know we’re capable of.”
There was a similar mental roadblock in Harvard’s first game against Columbia this season, Moore said. The Lions have shared the last two regular-season titles with Princeton, and before Sunday, Harvard had beaten each team only once in Moore’s three seasons. Last season, Harvard went 0-5 against them and 9-1 against every other Ivy League opponent.
“We were a little timid for my liking” in the first Columbia game, Moore said on Wednesday. “And against those teams, you got to come out and you got to play fearless. … So we’ve got to figure out a way not only to win these games, but also care less about what color they’re wearing and more about, they tie their shoes the same way we do, and they eat a pregame meal the same way that we do.”
There was no timidity on Sunday, and the Crimson reveled in playing on the road, much like the Lions had in January.
“I thought we really grew up from the last time we played these guys,” Moore said postgame. “… You saw more of who we are. … And I loved our toughness. I loved our togetherness.”
In contrast, Griffith thought her team got distracted at home amid the fanfare of Alumnae Weekend and a sellout crowd that included many family and friends.
“I don’t know where our heads were at,” she said. “I don’t know if it was just being home, big game, expecting to win, but mentality-wise, it’s like, we have all the tools to do what we need to do, as every team believes. And I just don’t think we believed that to our core today when shit got hard. …
“We started playing iso ball. We started playing like [Harvard], honestly. … That’s just not our style. And, yeah, they played better than us.”
The game also offered important lessons for both teams. In an extended postgame talk with her players, Griffith emphasized that Columbia needed to learn from the loss.
“This is a gift,” she said in her press conference. “And if you don’t learn from this with a lot of season left, then that’s your problem. But for us, we’re gonna learn from this. I guarantee that.”
“This has to go somewhere,” Henderson told reporters. “We have to do something with this loss.”
There is already a blueprint for the Lions to learn from a loss to Harvard. Two seasons ago, No. 3 seed Harvard upset No. 2 Columbia in the Ivy League Tournament, which kept the Lions from making the NCAA Tournament. But the Lions refocused and caught fire after that, making a run to the WNIT championship game that included beating Harvard in the quarterfinals.
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For Harvard, this year’s team now knows what it takes to beat the top of the league, and that could have ripple effects on its confidence and aggressiveness for the rest of the season. The Crimson will have a chance on Feb. 28 to avenge their loss to Princeton, and their new mentality will be critical there, too.
With four regular-season games left, there’s a possibility that Harvard pulls even with Columbia and Princeton to share the regular-season title at 12-2. If that happens, it would be Harvard’s first Ivy League title since 2008. It would also be a fitting ending to a regular season in which those three teams have been among the nation’s best all year.
It’s also very possible that the Ivy League gets multiple bids to the NCAA Tournament for the second straight season, after only doing that once before 2024.
But Harvard wasn’t trying to think that far ahead on Sunday. The Crimson just knew they’d aced a big test — and would get to celebrate with fried chicken on the long bus ride home.
Written by The Next
Jenn Hatfield is The Next's managing editor, Washington Mystics beat reporter and Ivy League beat reporter. She has been a contributor to The Next since December 2018. Her work has also appeared at FiveThirtyEight, Her Hoop Stats, FanSided, Power Plays, The Equalizer and Princeton Alumni Weekly.
