Harvard Hardwood, the Harvard Magazine basketball report
Hanging from the rafters of Lavietes Pavilion are 11 banners that read “WOMEN,” each a permanent memento of an Ivy League Championship that head coach Kathy Delaney-Smith and her teams have captured. But at a series of practices this fall, Delaney-Smith— now in her thirty-third year as Harvard’s head coach—and her players were focused on a more abstract and ephemeral marker of success. Resting in front of the scorer’s table at center court was a rectangular board that was bare at the start of each practice but had space for 10 letters: E – X – C – E – L – L – E – N – C – E. The squad earns a letter for each of 10 “excellent” actions, some tangible (e.g., taking a charge) and others abstract (e.g., defensive effort).
The immediate incentive for earning excellence points is that every letter results in one less sprint at the end of practice, but witnessing Delaney-Smith enthusiastically reward her players for picking up a fallen teammate or forcing a 10-second violation (a turnover caused when the defense prevents the offense from crossing half court before 10 seconds have elapsed on the shot clock), it becomes clear that she believes that the excellence program will foster the requisite teamwork, tenacity, and consistency that can lead to a twelfth championship banner.
That is exactly what these women, particularly the squad’s four seniors, hope and plan to achieve. By any objective standard, the class of 2015 contingent has had an extraordinary run: a three-year record of 61-29 and three National Invitational Tournament (NIT) appearances—not to mention opening-round victories each time. But these seniors are more focused on a single number: second. That’s where they’ve finished in the Ivy League standings during each of their years in Cambridge, and this year, despite being pegged as the third-best team in the conference in a pre-season poll, they are committed to finishing atop the league. As co-captain Kaitlyn Dinkins pointed out, they know that this is their “last shot.”
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Memo to Opposing Offenses: “Expect the Worst”
The last time the Harvard women’s basketball team took the floor to compete was March 24, when they lost to Rutgers in the NIT’s second round. But to appreciate what energizes this squad, go back to the penultimate weekend of February, when the Crimson hosted Penn and Princeton. With only one league loss, the Harvard players entered the weekend with an opportunity to put themselves in the driver’s seat for the Ivy League title. After losing both games, their championship hopes effectively disappeared. The squad still swept the rest of its regular season slate (including a victory over Yale that gave Delaney-Smith 515 wins, the most of any coach—male or female—in Ivy League basketball history). They also won on a dramatic last-second shot in the opening round of the NIT, where they defeated Iona by a score of 90 to 89. But according to sophomore Maggie Hartman, the team’s late-February losses to the Quakers (the ultimate league champs) and the Tigers have “motivated” this year’s squad “like none other.”
To ensure that her team channeled that drive productively, Delaney-Smith asked each of her players to add a new dimension to her game over the summer. Some improved their confidence and others their shooting. But the most significant change appears to have come from six-foot-four senior forward Temi Fagbenle. A member of the British National team that competed in the 2012 London Olympics and a two-time All Ivy player, Fagbenle was already poised to continue being one of the league’s most dominant players. But she and her coach both saw an opportunity for improvement: honing her ability to go to her left.
As a result, while spending the summer in South Africa doing an internship with the National Basketball Association (Hartman and men’s basketball co-captain Steve Moundou-Missi ’15 participated in the program as well), she practiced dribbling and finishing with her left hand. Paired with the arrival of a pair of six-foot-four freshmen, Anna Lachenauer and Maddy Tessier-Kay, Fagbenle’s increased range will allow her to play more on the perimeter, which is likely to create matchup problems for the Crimson’s smaller opponents. It will also serve as one of several ways—along with increased ball movement and movement off the ball (offensive players making cuts or moving to open space when they don’t possess the ball)—that the team hopes to replace the production of last year’s leading scorer, Christine Clark ’14, who averaged 16.5 points per game.
Defensively, the team will look to offset the loss of two of the best “stoppers” in program history, Melissa Mullins ’14 and Jasmine Evans ’14, with a swarming team-based approach rather than with any single player. In practices this fall, Delaney-Smith has highlighted the need for communicating, switching on screens (picking up the player your teammate was guarding when she is blocked by a pick or “screen”), and above all exhibiting intensity. And if the senior players’ comments are any guide, the team seems to have internalized her message. Point guard Ali Curtis ’15 likens the defense to a “wolf pack,” and Fagbenle, when asked what teams should look for from Harvard on the defensive end, offered a concise warning: “Expect the worst.”
From South Bend to Penn and Princeton—Again
Just how far this ethos will take the Crimson, the squad will soon begin to find out. After opening their season by hosting Colgate this Saturday, November 15, and then playing crosstown rival Boston University two days later, the Crimson will travel to South Bend, Indiana, to take on Notre Dame—a program that has been to four consecutive National Collegiate Athletic Association Final Fours. This will be the highlight of a nonconference slate that also features matchups with Temple (the team that knocked the Crimson out of the 2012 NIT) and Northeastern, which is coached by former Harvard assistant Kelly Cole. When Harvard begins league play in January, their chief competition will likely again be Penn and Princeton, the two squads picked to finish ahead of the Crimson in the pre-season media poll.
Every season, of course, begins in a hopeful quest for a championship. But as the players continue their interwoven pursuits of daily excellence and a more permanent banner, it does seem that the squad can count on a more intangible set of characteristics that already distinguish them. Numerous players described the group as the most “selfless” Crimson cohort on which they have ever played. Delaney-Smith says that this is one of the “hardest-working” teams she has ever coached. And Curtis lauds her teammates for their “swag.”
Undergirding the team is a foundational, reciprocal bond between Delaney-Smith and her players. When asked what compels her to keep competing after more than three decades at Harvard, the coach immediately says, “My team, that group of women, is totally—100 percent—driving me.” Dinkins, the senior co-captain, offers the inverse response. Yes, she says, she and her classmates want a banner for themselves, but above all they want to “win a title so badly for Kathy.”
It is for that reason, above all, that this team cannot wait to begin taking its last shot.
See earlier Harvard Hardwood posts:
“The Method to (March?) Madness,” on men’s coach Tommy Amaker
“From Crimson Madness to March Madness?” a preview of the men’s season
