20-03-2025
Harvard women's basketball coach Carrie Moore had her team play a tough schedule, and it paid off
Crimson coach
Carrie Moore
said she wanted to establish a tough schedule. She set the tone by accepting an invitation to play in the Cancun Challenge in 2022, with the Big Ten's Purdue, the Big 12′s Oklahoma State, and the ACC's Florida State in the field.
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'That was one of the first decisions I made being the head coach here,' she said. 'We could have gone to one tournament and played all three mid-majors. The other option was they were reaching out for us to go to Cancun and play in that tournament and we would play three straight games and it was all P4 opponents. And I said, of course, we're going to Cancun. There's no other no other option. Since then we've always wanted to schedule in that way.'
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The Crimson also have to build a schedule around the rigors of Ivy League academia.
'Our girls can only miss so many class days,' Moore said. 'We can only travel on certain days or certain times throughout the year. So there's a lot that goes into it. We reach out to a lot of teams and the answer that we get a lot of times is, 'No, we don't wanna play you.' So then you're backtracking because you're trying to find games and trying to stay within all of these parameters, but it's difficult.'
This year, the Crimson traveled to Bloomington, Ind., to play No. 25 Indiana two games into the season. They came back and took a loss at Quinnipiac, which finished 28-4. They went on the road to play Northwestern, Illinois State, Stony Brook, and St. John's. Add that to their regional games against UMass, Boston University, Boston College, Maine and Rhode Island, plus their slate in an Ivy League that was as competitive as it's ever been, and the Crimson had a schedule that the committee couldn't overlook.
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'We have to schedule that way in order to just be in the conversation,'
It worked. The Crimson were in the NET rankings' top 50 for most of the season. They finished 34th.
The Crimson earned the 10th seed in the Spokane bracket, the highest seeding of Harvard's seven tournament appearances. The highest any Ivy team has been seeded is eighth (Princeton, 2015). The 10th seed is 48-120 all time in the dance. The best finish by a 10 seed was Oregon's run to the Elite Eight in 2017.
Moore said she wants to have a program that embraces playing the best competition, knowing the benefits in the long run.
'If you guys knew all the crazy stuff that goes into scheduling …' Moore said. 'It's actually pretty wild. We've always wanted to schedule competitively coming here. I think that's just me as a natural competitor. I want to play good teams. And from a recruiting standpoint, too, you want to recruit players that want to play a tough schedule and want to play great teams.'
History repeat
The Crimson made history in 1998 when they stunned Stanford in the first round, becoming the first 16 seed to upset a No. 1 seed. Crimson star guard
Harmoni Turner
said she's watched that game at least six times.
Moore said it might not be a bad idea to sit the entire team down and watch that moment in Harvard history again.
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Moore is big on visualization. Throughout the season, she's had her players imagine themselves in moments before they happen or relive scenarios before they head into games.
Before they faced Columbia on the road in February, they rewatched their win over No. 25 Indiana, then beat Columbia. Before they faced Princeton in the Ivy tournament opener, she had them rewatch their road win over St. John's, then they came from behind to beat Princeton.
The Crimson might draw some inspiration from seeing
Allison Feaster
drop 35 points on Stanford. And the full game is only a YouTube dive away.
'I really feel like that could be a great one to watch,' Moore said.
Honorable mention
Turner was an Associated Press All-America honorable mention. She became just the second Crimson women's basketball player to earn the honor … If the Crimson advance, they'll face the winner between second-seeded N.C. State (26-6) and 15th-seeded Vermont (21-12). As the host for the first two rounds, N.C. State essentially will be playing a home game. Vermont, which won its eighth America East title, is back in the tournament for the second time in the past three seasons … This is Moore's first trip to the tournament as a head coach, but she's accumulated plenty of experience as an assistant. She went three times as an assistant at Creighton, three times with Princeton, and once with North Carolina and was part of Michigan's Elite Eight run in 2022.
Julian Benbow can be reached at
