What winning the Ivy League Tournament means to Harvard — and shows about the league overall

At least, they do if you’re Ariel Gaston, Harvard’s assistant coach and wardrobe coordinator for the coaching staff. She decided to go big for the Ivy League Tournament final and picked out two tops from the Harvard Coop, the school’s bookstore, for head coach Carrie Moore to choose between. Moore opted for a bright red sweater with white stripes on the bottom and sleeves and a large red H on the front.

“I liked this one the best,” Moore told reporters postgame. “… So we felt like, why not go retro and throw some leather pants on? Set the tone.”

The outfits delivered, as No. 3 seed Harvard beat No. 1 seed Columbia 74-71 to win the first Ivy League Tournament title in program history. It’s the Crimson’s first conference title of any kind since winning the regular-season title in 2008. It also puts Harvard in the NCAA Tournament for the seventh time ever and first since 2007.

“Today means everything,” said Moore, who won her first Ivy title as a head coach in her third season at Harvard. “… There’s a lot that goes into this, a lot of sacrifice. … I know I just got here, but I wanted it the first year I was here. And so it just feels really incredible to finally get over that hump and release kind of the weight on your shoulders a little bit.”

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Saturday’s final was an instant classic, featuring six ties and five lead changes. Neither team ever led by more than eight points, and Harvard became the only non-No. 1 seed to win the title since the modern version of the tournament began in 2017. In fact, the Crimson now own the only three upsets in the tournament’s modern history.

Harvard could’ve easily started sluggishly after Friday’s hard-fought battle with Princeton in the second semifinal. The Crimson had to come back from a 13-point deficit in the second half, and they leaned heavily on senior guard Harmoni Turner, who scored a tournament-record 44 points.

But Harvard was ready from the opening tip on Saturday. “I think we’ve shown we’re such a tough team, and we’ve sacrificed so much as players and coaches,” sophomore guard Karlee White told reporters postgame. “And we will never be too tired to win a championship.”

Or, as Turner quipped as she exited the podium: “Sleep’s for chumps!”

Both Columbia and Harvard press for 40 minutes, so the game was a frenetic battle of teams trying to shove each other’s mistakes back down their throats. The crowd, which leaned toward the Lions, was seemingly cheering at warp speed to match the teams’ pace. Harvard ripped off a 15-8 run after a nearly even first quarter, but Columbia responded with a 6-0 one. 

Though Harvard entered the tournament allowing the fewest points per game in the nation, there was a lot of high-level scoring on both sides. At half, Harvard led 46-42 — a far cry from 19-16 in the most recent regular-season game between the teams.

“To end that second quarter, I mean, it was just offense on offense on offense on offense,” Moore said.

Both teams were desperate to win, and that showed up plainly on the court. In the third quarter, for example, Columbia junior guard/forward Perri Page hit a 3-pointer to pull the Lions within 5 points. She then turned toward her bench and screamed twice, and the crowd screamed with her just as vehemently.

Less than two minutes later, Harvard first-year guard Lydia Chatira and junior forward Katie Krupa trapped Columbia first-year guard Mia Broom on the baseline. They forced Broom to step out of bounds, and Krupa reacted by screaming, “Let’s go!” in Chatira’s face and chest-bumping her.

“We know each other, so it’s personal,” Columbia head coach Megan Griffith told reporters postgame. “You saw it. It was super chippy out there. I mean, they’re literally clobbering each other, peeling themselves off the ground, almost getting in fights. Like, are you kidding me? This is amazing.”

That urgency is also because Columbia and Harvard are both programs on the rise, and their timelines are colliding. The Lions have been ascendant for several years under Griffith. In 2023, they won a share of the regular-season title for the first time ever and would have made their first NCAA Tournament if not for a loss to Harvard in the Ivy League Tournament semifinals. Last season, they got that NCAA Tournament bid, and this year, they won the regular-season title outright for the first time. The fairytale ending would’ve been winning their first conference tournament this season, but Harvard had its own Cinderella story to tell.

Harvard had dominated the Ivy League in the 1990s and 2000s under former head coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, but it was going through a relative title drought when Delaney-Smith retired in 2022. Enter Moore, who brought with her the slogan “Believe it” and a vision to get Harvard back to winning championships.

It started with defense: In the players’ first workout with Moore, they didn’t touch a basketball, Turner told reporters on Saturday. But it took until this season for the defense to become elite and position the Crimson to build on third-place regular-season finishes in 2023 and 2024. That was just in time for Turner and fellow senior Elena Rodriguez, who were determined not to leave without a championship.

“Every year, we’re like, ‘This has to be it!’” Turner said about herself and Rodriguez. “And this year we [were] like, ‘We’re getting this. I don’t care — whatever it takes.’”

Turner starred again for the Crimson on Saturday, putting up 24 points to eclipse 2,000 for her career. But this time, she got more help. Rodriguez had 13 points, nine assists and four rebounds, and a Harvard team that averaged 21.4 points from its bench entering Saturday got 31.

White led the reserves with 12 points on 6-for-7 shooting and five rebounds, and sophomore forward/guard Abigail Wright had eight points on 3-for-4 shooting and seven rebounds. Wright seemed to be involved in every loose ball late, with four of her rebounds coming in the fourth quarter. After the game, as she sat at center court with a few teammates and basked in the rainbow streamers, she shouted, “Oh, guys, I’m so happy! Wow, I’m so happy!”

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Harvard’s press didn’t do as much damage as usual, forcing 13 Columbia turnovers, but the Crimson had 14 points off turnovers to Columbia’s seven. Harvard also had a 40-24 advantage in paint points, mainly on smart cuts rather than post-ups. Columbia doubled Harvard up in second-chance points, but it wasn’t quite enough.

The two teams are so similar that at times, they seemed to repeat each other. One team would hit a 3-pointer or turn it over, and then the other would, too. So it was only fitting that the game came down to the final plays, in an arena so boisterous that the table in at least one media section shook as the teams came out of a late timeout. 

Ultimately, Columbia found itself down by three with the ball with five seconds left. Harvard had survived the same scenario in the semifinals, and again it went Harvard’s way. Columbia’s leading scorer, sophomore guard Riley Weiss, missed an open 3-pointer that looked destined to force overtime from the second it left her hand.

“I think it’s a great shot for a great shooter that’s trying to figure out how to be a star,” Griffith said. “And I am super proud of Riley. … Every time she shoots it, I think it’s in, so that one wasn’t any different.”

When the buzzer sounded, there was pandemonium on the court and in the stands. Harvard players ran to center court to celebrate, except for Turner, who ran straight to Moore for an emotional embrace that ended with them both lying on the court.

Turner eventually joined her teammates to make “snow angels” in the streamers — and to slap a Harvard sticker on the cardboard NCAA Tournament “ticket” the league presented to the team. She twirled for dramatic effect before pounding the sticker onto the board.

Meanwhile, Moore gathered her staff for a group hug — something she’d pictured doing when she won a title. Her staff has not changed during her tenure, and she wanted to thank them for their dedication and tell them she loved them.

 The coaches soon broke their huddle and joined the players, who delighted in hoisting some of them in the air and spinning them around. At one point, Turner was by herself and overcome with emotion, bent over at the knees and crying, before Gaston and assistant coach Ali Sanders pulled her up for a hug.

“I told myself I wasn’t gonna cry,” Turner said, “but … I ended up crying like a baby.

“But yeah, when you put in so much work and you work for something for so many years and it finally happens, the least you can do is cry because you’re so grateful for that opportunity and you gave it your all and … it finally ended the way that it should have ended.”

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A few minutes later, the focus turned to the woman who’d started it all and was watching the game from the upper deck. Delaney-Smith coached at Harvard for 40 years, won 11 Ivy League titles, and recruited the upperclassmen to Cambridge. “Kathy! Kathy!” the team yelled until she realized the shouts were for her. She jumped up and down with both fists in the air, then blew kisses down to the court.

And before Harvard left the court, it had to cut down the net. That went uneventfully, but several players were so focused on it that they barely heard the public address announcer reveal the All-Tournament team, with Rodriguez on the team and Turner as the Most Outstanding Player.

“I had no idea what was going on,” Rodriguez told reporters postgame about her own name being called. “But then after hearing my name and then Harmoni’s, and then the MVP for Harmoni, I … just went to give her a hug right away. And I didn’t even realize at first [that] she didn’t know what was going on, but it was just my first reaction, going to give her a hug, because she deserves this and she worked so hard for this.”

Moore got the honor of making the final cuts, and she twirled the untethered net around her head like a lasso, to her players’ delight. As she descended the ladder, players and staff alike began to sing and dance along as DJ Khaled’s “All I Do Is Win” played in the arena.

Eventually, the net made its way to Turner, and she wore it as a necklace in the postgame press conference, with the piece she cut tucked behind her ear like a pencil. She chugged water and pumped her fist over her head as Moore gave her opening statement. The press conference was loose and upbeat, with laughs and fist bumps and gentle ribbing.

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Saturday’s game was more than just the crowning of a new champion, though. It also showed how much the conference has grown since Harvard’s previous title.

It was the highest-scoring championship game since the modern tournament began. It featured two teams in the top 50 of the national NET rankings and three players who were ranked in espnW’s top 100 coming out of high school. (Princeton is also a top-50 NET team and has three top-100 players.)

Delaney-Smith sometimes got top-100 recruits at Harvard, including Turner and junior guard Saniyah Glenn-Bello, and helped set the standard for talent in the league. Moore also credited Courtney Banghart, who coached at Princeton from 2007 to 2019 and had both Griffith and Moore on her staff at different times, with getting elite recruits to see the league as a destination.

Now, the Ivy League could get three total bids to the NCAA Tournament: Harvard’s automatic berth plus at-large berths for Columbia and Princeton. Before this season, it’d gotten just two at-large berths ever.

“This is what you want in March,” Griffith said. “I mean, talk about two great teams battling for a championship. We’ve never seen Ivy League women’s basketball look like this.”

As Harvard waits to hear where it will play its first NCAA Tournament game in nearly two decades, Gaston will be busy again. Moore was asked postgame whether the red sweaters and black leather pants would return for that game, since they’d proven to be championship-worthy attire.

“Oh, no, no,” Moore said with a laugh and big plans up her sleeve. “We must get a new outfit.”

The Next’s Natalie Heavren contributed reporting for this story.