CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The Yale women's basketball team was facing a tough test Saturday night against archrival Harvard at Lavietes Pavilion, taking on a Crimson team that had won four in a row and six of its last seven. For much of the first half and into the second the Bulldogs were able to stymie Harvard's offense – ranked No. 2 in the league entering the day – en route to building an 18 point lead. And though the Crimson came up with a response and eventually built a lead of their own, the Bulldogs kept their composure and fought back to send the game into overtime. There, thanks to heroics from a number of different players, they earned an emotional 71-70 win.
Saturday's edition of this ancient rivalry was bound to be historic, given that it was the first Harvard-Yale game for both coaches –
Dalila Eshe, Yale's Joel E. Smilow, Class of 1954 Head Coach of Women's Basketball, and Carrie Moore of Harvard. The Bulldogs' win added to the significance – it was their first victory at Lavietes since Jan. 27, 2012.
It did not come easily, even after the Bulldogs shot .464 in the first half to lead 35-23 at halftime.
"We did an exceptional job of running our offense early on, and got high-quality shots," said Eshe.
Among the biggest contributors in the early going for Yale was junior forward
Haley Sabol, who scored all 11 of her points in the first half.
"Haley is continuing to find her confidence more and more every day," said Eshe. "We see spectacular things in practice, and it's great to see that translating to games now."
After a 6-0 run by Yale got the lead to 18 at 6:50 of the third, Harvard (9-6, 2-1 Ivy League) began chipping away. The Crimson were within eight by the end of the third quarter, then went on a 12-0 run to take a 49-47 lead with 6:05 left. A layup by sophomore guard
Nyla McGill tied the game briefly, but Harvard then reeled off eight straight points to take a seemingly commanding lead – 57-49 with 3:45 to play.
Yale (8-8, 2-1 Ivy League) started its rally with a three-pointer from junior guard
Jenna Clark. Clark then set up McGill for a layup and hit a pull-up jump shot as the teams traded baskets and time became more and more of an issue for the Bulldogs. They trailed by five, 61-56, with 1:36 left.
The game could well have slipped away on a pair of missed Yale free throws with 50 seconds left, but after the second one junior guard
Klara Astrom swooped in for a critical offensive rebound. She laid the ball up and in to pull Yale within three with 45 seconds left.
Next came one of the signature plays of the game – and the season so far for Yale. Harvard put the ball in the hands of sophomore guard Harmoni Turner, the Ivy League scoring leader. McGill locked in on her and, as Turner dribbled right, pounced on the ball when Turner lost the handle. McGill then had the composure to pull up and let Clark have the ball; Clark promptly sent it over to a wide-open Astrom for a three that tied the game.
While Turner would finish with 26 points, the work McGill did on her defensively ultimately helped position Yale for the victory – as did McGill's 18 points and 11 rebounds, her fourth double-double of the year. She also had five steals.
"She did an unbelievable job on Harmoni," said Eshe. "We knew that she would have to. The goal was to make [Turner] work for all of her points. Nyla is banged up, but she's a fighter, and the epitome of what we want this team to be defensively"
Clark's late-game heroics came while she was dealing with foul trouble – she picked up her fourth with 6:55 left in regulation. With the game tied at that point, Eshe left her in. Clark would finish as the only player besides Turner to play all 45 minutes in the game; she scored 13 points.
"She knew I would lose my mind if she was not available to run our team," Eshe said with a smile. "That's an upperclassman, our floor captain. There's no way she was about to foul out."
A steal by McGill denied Harvard's chance to win as time expired in regulation, and Clark opened the overtime by rebounding a Crimson miss and driving for a layup that gave Yale a 63-61 lead.
The lead grew to six with 1:19 left in overtime, thanks to a three-pointer by first-year guard
Kiley Capstraw, but Harvard kept battling. After a layup by Crimson guard Elena Rodriguez, free throws by Capstraw and Clark made it 71-65 Yale with 24 seconds left.
A turnaround jumper by Harvard guard Lola Mullaney and a three-pointer by Turner got the Crimson within one, and they had the ball with seven seconds left after a Yale turnover. But the Bulldogs forced Turner into a desperation shot at the buzzer that clanged off the back of the rim and out.
The victory celebration was all the more special thanks to a dedicated group of Yale supporters who made sure that, even in hostile territory, the Bulldogs never felt outnumbered.
"We had an unbelievable group of alums here, along with parents and friends and athletic department administrators," said Eshe. "The team fed off that energy. The combination of that with the energy from our bench made a difference. They were the sixth man."
Saturday night's win was all the more impressive given where both teams were just a week earlier. On Dec. 31 at Lavietes Harvard enjoyed a milestone 67-59 win vs. Princeton, the defending Ivy League champion, that snapped the Tigers' 42 game Ivy League winning streak. Yale, meanwhile, fell to Columbia 97-53 at home.
It was the type of loss that left the Bulldogs at a turning point just one game into the Ivy League portion of the season. Yale's response started on Friday night with a 57-47 win at Dartmouth, and the Bulldogs kept that momentum into Saturday.
"It could go one of two ways [after the Columbia loss] – it could spiral us down right at the start of Ivy season, or it could wake us up," said Eshe. "It ended up waking us up. We understand how hard it is to get wins, and how hard we have to work. The team made the decision to be a different team."
At 2-1 in league play Columbia, Harvard and Yale are all now tied for second in the standings behind 3-0 Penn.
Yale hosts Cornell Saturday at 3:00 p.m.
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