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Playing its third game in five days, including a second straight road trip, Harvard women’s basketball ran out of gas in the second half and fell 68-55 to UMass at the Mullins Center on Tuesday night.
In a fast-paced physical game, the Crimson (1-2) used an 8-0 run to close out the first frame to take a 17-13 lead, then scored 12 of the last 14 points of the second quarter to head into the locker room up 29-22.
Playing in front of 3,348 fans, including 75 family and friends of Detroit-area native and Harvard coach Carrie Moore, the No. 13 Michigan Wolverines dominated both sides of the ball on their way to a comfortable 84-55 victory at the Crisler Center on Sunday afternoon.
The game was knotted at 7-7 three minutes into the contest before the Maize and Blue (2-0) went on a 17-0 run to end the first quarter up 24-8. Harvard (1-1) battled back in the second frame, twice cutting the deficit to 10 with less than two minutes to go in the half. But three layups over the final 61 seconds sent Michigan to the locker room with a 40-24 lead.
The Wolverines didn’t let up in the second half, extending their advantage to 20 late in the third quarter and 29, 84-55, by the time the final buzzer sounded.
Some reflections on a tough first road game of the season for the reigning Ivy League Tournament champions:
If you’ve followed Harvard women’s basketball throughout the Carrie Moore era, you know the team is a reflection of the coach and her Detroit grit. That style was on full display on Friday evening, as the Crimson battled through injuries and rough shooting from the field to come away with a 61-56 win over visiting St. John’s at Lavietes Pavilion.
The season-opening victory, which put an exclamation point on a night that started with Harvard (1-0) raising its 2025 Ivy League Tournament championship banner, was the second straight over the Johnnies (1-1) and fifth in a row against a Big East opponent.
The release of the Ivy League preseason media poll and 2025-26 Media Day revealed Princeton as the favorite heading into the 2025-26 season, followed by three-time defending champion Columbia, 2025 Ivy Madness title-holder Harvard in third and Penn rounding out the upper half of the conference.
Brown, which has tied the Quakers for fourth place the last two years, is the clear choice for the fifth slot. Dartmouth, Cornell and Yale are pegged for the last three spots, with the Big Green one point ahead of the Big Red and seven points in front of the Bulldogs.
In a NCAA Tournament Round of 64 matchup pitting No. 10 Harvard, one of the nation’s stingiest defenses, against No. 7 Michigan State, one of the country’s most prolific offenses, it was the higher seed coming away with a 64-50 victory Saturday. But the Spartans did it by effectively shutting down the Crimson for 40 minutes.
While Robyn Fralick’s squad, which won its first tournament game since 2019, moves on to a second-round game at Reynolds Coliseum Monday against host No. 2 North Carolina State, Carrie Moore’s team will use the experiences of this week, as well as the memories of its first Ivy League Tournament title, to make another run next season after ending an 18-year NCAA Tournament drought Saturday.
The question entering Saturday’s Ivy League Tournament championship game between No. 3 Harvard and No. 1 Columbia was, “What can Harmoni Turner do for an encore?”
The answer: Win a championship.
The senior guard who exploded for a record-setting 44 points against Princeton in Friday night’s semifinal delivered a game-high 24 points, two rebounds, four assists and three steals to lead Harvard past Columbia, 74-71, for the Crimson’s first Ivy League Tournament championship and an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. It’s Harvard’s first NCAA Tournament berth since 2007.
Down one to Brown with 25 seconds to go and Harvard women’s basketball’s dream of an Ivy League regular season title slipping away, the Crimson’s Harmoni Turner drove straight down the lane for the go-ahead layup. Met by three Bears, the senior guard found an open Elena Rodriguez and the senior forward banked it in to put the Crimson up 58-57.
With no timeouts left for either team, junior guard Grace Arnolie pushed the ball up the right side for Bruno. Faced with her own triple-team, she dished it off to Olivia Young at the top of the arc. The sophomore guard quickly rifled the rock to senior center Gianna Aiello, who was wide open in front of the net.
After Rodriguez missed the steal, Aiello took a stutter step and definitively shot the ball against the backboard, hoping to put Bruno back on top, but it rattled off the rim and into Turner’s hands with less than five seconds left on the clock.
The All-Ivy guard, who is third in free throw percentage in the Ancient Eight, hit both free throws to put the game away for Harvard.
With the win, the Crimson (20-3, 9-2 Ivy) are tied for second in the conference with Princeton, one game away from Columbia, and the third team to clinch a spot in the Ivy League Tournament, which will be played on the same Pizzitola Sports Center court where they played on Saturday afternoon.
A victory over one of the top teams in the Ancient Eight would have given a huge boost to Brown’s Ivy Madness chances, but the loss dropped the Bears (10-14, 4-7) into fifth place, one game away from Penn.
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.
With two back-to-back road games in a six-day span, Harvard women’s basketball’s schedule didn’t do the team any favors.
It turned out not to matter, as the Crimson fought off a tenacious Stony Brook team on Wednesday afternoon and followed it up with a buzzer-beating victory at previously undefeated St. John’s less than 24 hours later.
As they headed back to Massachusetts, Carrie Moore’s squad, which entered the games at No. 11 in CollegeInsider.com’s Mid-Major Top 25, is 9-1 on the season and has a seven-game winning streak.
If there’s any more conference realignment on the horizon, the Harvard women may want to consider heading over to the Big Ten. For the second time this year, the Crimson traveled to the Midwest and came away with a victory.
While Harvard (6-1) needed overtime to defeat then-No. 25 Indiana, 72-68, on Nov. 7, it easily handled Northwestern (1-3), 70-65, on Saturday afternoon.