ITHACA, N.Y. – In the 13th meeting in the last four years between Columbia and Harvard women’s basketball, it was the Crimson coming out on top on a thrilling 67-65 overtime victory at Newman Arena Friday night.
With the win in the second semifinal of the Ivy League Tournament, coach Carrie Moore’s No. 3 seed Harvard (18-10, 11-4 Ivy League) will take on No. 1 seed Princeton, which prevailed 65-51 over No. 4 seed Brown in the opener, for the Ivy Madness title and the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
“We knew it was going to be a heavyweight match, all right, between these two teams,” Moore said in a postgame press conference. “Every time we play them, it is like this.”
For coach Megan Griffith’s Lions (20-8, 11-4), Friday’s loss prevents the program from earning its first-ever Ivy League Tournament championship and, most likely, sends the team to the WBIT.
The defeat was additionally disappointing since Columbia had its fate in their hands when they took on Harvard last Saturday at Levien Gym. The Senior Day loss to the Crimson knocked the Lions out of capturing their fourth straight regular season title and placed them into the No. 2 v. No. 3 rematch against the Crimson on Friday.
“Just underperformed,” Griffith said in a postgame press conference. “That’s what I would say. We just majorly underperformed this last week, and you just have to live with that, right? If you want to go and do something now in the WBIT, you’ve got to go figure that out. And they have to figure this out, if they want to be our leaders, they have to figure out what we’re going to do.”
As usual, the game between these two rivals was physical and fast-paced.
Harvard jumped out to a quick 10-2 lead, but multiple members of the Crimson starting lineup went to the bench in foul trouble, and the Lions took advantage of their absence to ultimately finished the quarter down 15-12.
Columbia took its first lead of the game 16-15, after senior guard Perri Page connected on two layups early in the second frame.
The teams continued to trade the advantage until Page sank an uncontested three from the right baseline with five seconds on the clock to send the Lions into the locker room up 28-25.
Similar to what happened in the previous two battles, Harvard came out on top in the third quarter with the No. 3 seed winning the frame 20-14. During that stretch, junior guard Karlee White, junior forward Abigail Wright and first-year guard Olivia Jones led the way with 18 of the Crimson’s points.
Harvard opened the lead to eight points, 53-45, after Wright sank two free throws with 4:48 left in regulation.
Since neither of these squads can ever do anything easily against the other, the Lions naturally came back.
Junior guard Riley Weiss, the Ivy League Player of the Year, sank a mid-range jumper, then Page finished a 3-on-1 break to make it a 53-49 contest.
Weiss followed that up with an uncontested triple from the right elbow after a Wright layup to make it a three-point game with 2:31 in the fourth.
The Player of the Year then hit a spinning layup to make it 55-54.
Jones made one of two free throws, and Columbia senior captain Susie Rafiu hit both of her free throws to knot the game at 56 with 37 seconds on the clock.
Harvard worked the clock down to 14 seconds, and Harvard’s Saniyah Glenn-Bello was sent to the line.
The senior wing missed both free throws, but Jones came down with the key offensive rebound.
After Jones handed it to White, she drove the left baseline and missed a layup. Rafiu secured the rebound. But the Lions didn’t capitalize on the final possession, and the game headed to overtime.
In the extra frame, White hit a triple to put the Crimson up 59-56. The clutch shot was more impressive given that her team had collectively shot 1-for-11 from beyond the arc up until that moment.
Columbia was down one, 61-60, with under a minute to go when senior forward Katie Krupa sank another triple to give the Crimson a four-point advantage.
The teams were still separated by four points, 66-62, with fewer than 10 seconds on the clock, when Weiss sank a three-ball to make it a one-point game.
White was sent to the free throw line and made her first to make it 67-65.
She missed the second and the Lions came down with the rebound, giving the Light Blue one last chance to send the game to a second overtime or win the contest.
The inbounds pass went to junior forward Hilke Feldrappe, who sent it to Weiss on the right side of the court.
The Columbia sharpshooter drove the lane and went up for the final shot in overtime number one.
The basket missed its mark, but the referees signaled that the double-teamed Weiss was fouled by White.
With Weiss and the entire Lions bench expecting her to head to the line, the referees went to the scorer’s table to review the video tape.
“If Riley Weiss is at the line for two free throws, the assumption is that she’s going to make both of those,” Wright said of the 84.2% free-throw shooter on the year.
After several minutes of deliberation, the referees came to the conclusion that Weiss had been fouled after the buzzer and the game ended, allowing Harvard to take the two-point win.
Wright led the way for Harvard with 18 points on an 8-for-14 effort from the field.
Wright’s 33-minute performance came after the Crimson big had been taken out of the game in the fourth quarter in recent wins over Ivy tournament participants Brown and Columbia.
“[F]alling back to the level of my preparation, focusing a lot on my mindset coming into this game after last weekend’s game I think was huge for me, and being able to have those conversations with not only my head coach but my teammates and assistants as well, they instill the utmost confidence in me and continue to tell me that I’m capable.”
White, who like Wright sat on the bench for major minutes in the opening half after picking up a pair of fouls, added 16 points and drew the Lions into six fouls.
Krupa, who was 0-for-4 from three-p9int range before her big triple late in the extra quarter, ended with nine points and six rebounds.
While it was small consolation to Weiss, she was the night’s leading scorer with 25 points, including an 11-point effort in the first seven minutes on the night.
Broom, the team’s sixth woman, played over 39 minutes on the night and finished with 12 points.
Page had big buckets in the second quarter to give Columbia its halftime lead and dominated the scoring column in the first two matchups, but the Crimson got the upper hand on Friday night and limited the First Team All-Ivy and Defensive Player of the Year to nine points. Just as important, Harvard got her to foul out in the fourth quarter, and the Lions leader was left on the bench in the decisive five-minutes.
The Crimson may not have shot well from three, going only 3-for-15 (20%) for the game, but they managed a 24-for-47 (51.1%) effort from two. On the defensive end, Harvard won the rebounding rate battle by 9.1%, the points in the pain by 16 points (44-to-28) and held the Lions to a 16-for-39 effort (41%) from inside the arc.
Following the second straight win over Columbia, Moore told the assembled media that she had just told her team to literally and figuratively flush this victory out of their mind in order to prepare for Saturday night’s battle against Princeton.
While the Crimson defeated the Tigers in last year’s Ivy League Tournament semifinal, they lost both contests to Princeton this year, including one at the buzzer.
If they can successfully recover from Friday’s rock fight, perhaps a second straight Ivy Madness title and NCAA Tournament appearance are in their immediate future.
“We’ve really prepped all year long to learn how to finish basketball games,” Moore said. “We weren’t great at it all year long, but we are finishing basketball games at the right time.”