Harvard Women's basketball makes NCAA Tournament for first time since 2007
The Crimson beat Columbia, 74-71, on Saturday to win the Ivy League Tournament for the first time in school history. Harmoni Turner led the way for Harvard with 24 points and captured tournament MVP honors, which capped off an incredible weekend for the Crimson's senior guard. In Harvard's semifinal win over Princeton on Friday, Turner scored 44 points to set new conference tournament and school records for most points in a game.
Harvard will be dancing this March as a 10-seed in the Regional 1 bracket. The Crimson will face 7-seeded Michigan State at Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, North Carolina at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday.
This marks Harvard's first trip to the NCAA Tournament in 18 years and the school's first under head coach Carrie Moore, who guided the Crimson to a 24-4 record in the regular season. Turner was Harvard's top player this year after averaging 22.5 points off 44 percent shooting from the floor. She surpassed 2,000 points for her career over the weekend to become just the third player in Harvard history to reach the milestone.
The Crimson have a tough matchup against Michigan State, which went 21-9 and finished fifth in the Big Ten. But Harvard showed it could compete with some of the biggest programs in the nation early in the season, with wins over both Big Ten powerhouses Indiana (which was ranked No. 25 at the time) and Northwestern in November.
"It gives us a little extra confidence in that, hey, we've been in this situation before against a Big Ten, power-five team," senior guard Elana Rodriguez told WBZ-TV's Steve Burton on Sunday. "I think we can do it one more time. As we always say, third time's the charm."
Harvard closed the season with nine wins over its last 10 games, and will look to pull off a pretty big upset next weekend. The Crimson have the biggest upset in women's tournament history, as the 1998 team upset top-seeded Stanford as a 16-seed. Harvard made it to the round of 32 that season, which was the school's best performance in an NCAA Tournament.
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