Harvard women’s basketball crushes Brown, 83-53, to get back into win column

The Harvard women rebounded from last weekend’s last-second loss to Princeton in a big way, dominating Brown in all facets of the game in route to an easy 83-53 victory Saturday afternoon at Lavietes Pavilion.

While Carrie Moore’s squad, presently ranked the No. 2 team in the College Insider Mid-Major Top 25, is now 13-2 overall and 2-1 in the Ivy League, Monique LeBlanc’s Bears are 7-9 for the season and 1-2 in the Ancient Eight.

The teams were competitive for the first five minutes, with the score knotted at nine, but that turned out to be the high point for Bruno.

Over the next five minutes, the Crimson used runs of 8-0 and 9-0 to outscore the Bears 17-4 and finish the opening stanza with a commanding 26-13 lead.

Harvard quickly shook off last week’s shooting woes against the Tigers, where the team went 37% from the field and 2% (1-for-15) from three, by connecting on 58% of its attempts in the opening frame and 50% (4-for-8) from downtown.

Six different players scored for the Crimson, with star senior guard Harmoni Turner leading the way with three triples and 13 points.

A three-pointer from junior guard Grace Arnolie cut the deficit to 12 early in the second quarter, but another Turner three-pointer from the right elbow followed by a deep triple from the key gave Harvard a 34-16 advantage and forced LeBlanc to call a timeout at the 7:40 mark.

Brown was able to keep the deficit at 18 for the next few minutes, but the Crimson finished the half with a 6-0 run to make it 48-24 at the break.

Any hopes LeBlanc had for her team to get back into the contest were quickly dashed after a pair of guards, junior Saniyah Glenn-Bello and first-year Lydia Chatira, hit threes and junior forward Katie Krupa finished a give-and-go layup from Turner to extend the lead to 32, 58-26.

Bruno could only cut the lead to 27 points at the end of three and 26 late in the fourth quarter, as Brown ended up with its 18th consecutive defeat by Harvard.

Facing a Harvard team with lots of front court depth and guards who like to drive the lane, Brown dared the Crimson to win the game from the three-point line and relied heavily on a zone. Unfortunately for the Bears, Harvard went 38.9% from deep, which was its best percentage since shooting 39.1% in an 89-37 win over Northeastern on November 19, and its 14 triples were the most since the team made 15 in an 86-59 victory vs Cornell on Feb. 18, 2023. 

Meanwhile, the Crimson’s relentless defense limited Brown to 28% (7-for-25) shooting from three, forced 23 turnovers and won the rebounding battle by 13%.

Turner led all scorers with 33 points on 64.7% (11-for-17) shooting, including a 6-for-12 effort from beyond the arc. She also added four rebounds, three assists and three steals.

Krupa came off the bench to score 13 points in 19 minutes of action, while Glenn-Bello finished the day with nine points and nine rebounds.

If there was a possible cloud on an overall sunny day for Harvard, it was the fact that starting forward Gabby Anderson came out of the game at the 4:20 mark of the first quarter and did not return the rest of the day.

Arnolie, who put up 35 points against Yale last week and was named Ivy League Player of the Week, was the high scorer for Brown, but she was held to only 10 points by Harvard’s high-pressure defense.

Moore, who aims to lead Harvard back to its first Ivy championship since 2007, was satisfied with the return to the win column but still looking ahead to the challenges of battling for supremacy in league with Princeton (No. 3 in the most recent Mid-Major poll) and Columbia (No. 4).

“I’m not worried about her (Turner) or this team responding,” the head coach told the ESPN+ broadcast crew immediately after the game. “I just want us to get to the point where we don’t have to respond, that we can be consistent and the same team every single night, no matter who the opponent is.”

Harvard, presently tied for third with Dartmouth, will get another chance at consistency when taking on fifth-place Penn (10-6, 1-2 Ivy) at the Palestra on Monday afternoon. Brown, which is tied in the conference standings with the Quakers, will return to the Pizzitola Sports Center to take on seventh-place Cornell (4-12, 0-3). Both games start at 2 p.m. and can be seen on ESPN+.