TAMPA, Fla. — When Harvard senior guard Harmoni Turner wants to tout the quality of Ivy League women’s basketball, she often leans on a phrase that just popped into her head one day: “Nerds can hoop, too.”
So when Turner was invited to participate in the 2025 Lilly Women’s College All-Star Game and Combine during the Final Four, she decided to pack a bag of Nerds candy to share with her teammates.
“I took [the phrase] and ran with it, and a lot of people are following along with it,” Turner told The Next during the combine on April 4. “… Why not brand yourself and do as much as you can while you’re here, given the platform?”
The strength of the Ivy League was evident at the All-Star Game and Combine, which showcased players who are out of or are forfeiting their remaining college eligibility. Turner participated in both the game and the combine, and Columbia senior guard Kitty Henderson participated in the combine. They were among eight mid-major players there, and they made the Ivy League the only mid-major conference to send multiple players.
Turner and Henderson are elite in the Ivy League and nationally, yet they’re facing inflection points in their careers as graduation approaches. While Turner is certain she wants to play in the WNBA and hopes a team will select her in Monday’s draft, Henderson told The Next at the combine that she was still deciding whether to play professionally. For both players, this period between when their college careers ended and when their futures come into focus is one of the most uncertain times in their entire careers.
“I’m like, ‘What’s next?’” Henderson said. “And I haven’t had that for — I mean, my whole life, I guess, because [after] high school, you have then college, and then now it’s, ‘What’s next?’”
Playing in the WNBA has been Turner’s plan “since birth,” she told The Next after Saturday’s game. She helped her cause with a massive senior season, averaging 22.5 points, 5.4 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 2.8 steals per game. She was named the Ivy League Player of the Year, an honorable mention AP All-America and the Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year. She is Harvard’s first Ivy League Player of the Year since 2005.
Turner also led Harvard to its first-ever Ivy League Tournament title and its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2007. The Crimson had never received votes in the AP poll until this season, when they did 17 times.
“We’ve only had one other player in the history of our program that has even compared to what [Turner has] done,” Harvard head coach Carrie Moore told reporters on March 22. The other player she was referring to is Allison Feaster, the program’s all-time leading scorer and rebounder, who led the No. 16 seed Crimson to their famous upset of No. 1 seed Stanford in the 1998 NCAA Tournament.
Since Turner’s college career ended with a loss to Michigan State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, she has been working out, pursuing business opportunities, and finishing classes as a double major in sociology and African and African American studies. Her workouts have changed somewhat from the individual sessions she had during the season, becoming more physical and focusing more on speed, strength and agility.
“I haven’t really had that much time to process,” Turner said about the end of her college career. “… When I wake up, there’s something else going on.”
Turner decided to travel to Florida for the all-star events to prove herself against other WNBA prospects. As a top-50 recruit in her high school class, she’d played against a lot of them in AAU, but she didn’t face many of them in college after choosing Harvard.
“Just putting more emphasis that nerds can hoop and just giving the Ivy League a little bit more recognition,” Turner said about why she wanted to participate. “I feel like we’re the underdogs in a lot of perspectives, and so just coming out here, doing my best and hopefully [opening] a lot of people’s eyes that are potentially interested in drafting me.”
“All these experiences mean … something because you’re learning another step in your career,” Nancy Lieberman, Turner’s coach for the All-Star Game and a longtime family friend of the Turners, told The Next after Saturday’s game.
Turner was the high scorer for Team Lieberman, finishing with 15 points, five steals, three rebounds and two assists in 24 minutes. But she shot just 4-for-13 from the field and had seven turnovers playing with new teammates, and her team fell 71-59 to Team Miller.
One highlight came late in the first quarter, as Turner stole the ball in the backcourt, started to attack, circled back to the perimeter and sank a 3-pointer. She relied on her 3-point and midrange jump shots early in the game, then got to the rim more as the game went on.
In the third quarter, Turner lobbed the ball to Wyoming center Allyson Fertig for a layup to pull Team Lieberman within 3 points. That play seemed to get Turner more fired up than any other, as she screamed and clapped her hands twice in excitement.
“Honestly, this was probably the best game for coaches to watch,” Turner said afterward. “It wasn’t my best performance, but I feel like I did a really great job at staying positive, being connected with my teammates, really being intentional with my coaches … and never going inward. I feel like I exuded a lot of energy outward to my teammates.
“And we didn’t come up with a dub, but I think this is a good look for me overall. Glass half full.”
“Her game is going to be next level,” Lieberman said. “She’s going to get better. She’s going to cut down on some turnovers. But we all had to learn. … Me or Cheryl [Miller] and [Cynthia] Cooper or Annie [Meyers Drysdale], we weren’t at our peak at 22 years old. It takes time. … She’s smart. She wants to learn. She’s got such a hunger. She’s gonna be fine.”
Turner’s drive to learn was also evident early in the third quarter, when she leaned over on the bench to talk with former WNBA and Canadian national team forward Natalie Achonwa.
“I can learn a lot from her,” Turner said. “I mean, we didn’t necessarily play the same position, but she was a pro, and it was really great getting a lot of pointers from her and telling me what I needed to do and what I could work on. So … that’s something that I’m being really intentional about.”
Though Turner has always dreamed of making the WNBA, she hasn’t let herself think much about what hearing her name called in the draft would be like. She’s just hoping a team will believe in her enough to pick her.
“I just need an opportunity. That’s it,” she said. “And … once you give me that chance, I promise you, my good will outweigh my bad significantly. … Just call my name and I got you.”
“She has shown that her name should be called on [draft] night,” Moore said. “… She is a pro in everything that she does, and, I mean, she’s only scratching the surface.”
Meanwhile, Henderson was wrestling with her own questions at the combine: Did she want to play professionally? If so, where in the world might that take her?
When she moved all the way from Australia to enroll at Columbia as a freshman, she didn’t imagine ever getting to make these choices. But she is now the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year, a three-time All-Ivy honoree and the winningest player in Columbia history. She is also the only player in Ivy League history to amass at least 1,300 career points, 700 rebounds, 450 assists and 150 steals.
With Henderson, Columbia made tons of history, including making the WNIT final in 2023, winning the first three Ivy League titles in program history and winning its first Division I NCAA Tournament game. The Lions galvanized the community, too, to the point that Columbia is now known for its raucous crowds and Henderson gets stopped on the street in New York and congratulated.
“She’s just a winner in every possible way,” Columbia head coach Megan Griffith told reporters on March 1, a day after Henderson had a triple-double against Brown. “I mean, she’s literally a winner in every facet of her life, maybe except cleaning her room. …
“Her habits have become so purposeful and intentful, and success doesn’t happen by accident. … And Kitty’s absolutely the most living proof of that that I’ve ever been able to coach in our program.”
Like Turner, Henderson’s college career ended in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. After that loss to West Virginia, it took time for Henderson to recalibrate emotionally and feel ready to move forward.
“The next couple days after that, I was just super unstable emotionally, like just randomly crying when someone would say anything,” she said. “But now I’m kind of working out what I need to do. … I’ve got the right support around me and lots of good options.”
While she figures out her next move, Henderson has been meeting with agents, lifting weights and playing one-on-one with fellow senior Cecelia Collins. Collins is also a guard, but she’s two inches taller than Henderson and often played the four for Columbia. So Collins has the advantage one-on-one in the post while Henderson has it on the perimeter.
“When we play ones, we’re like, ‘Oh, shit.’ Like, we go hard,” Henderson said with a laugh. “But it’s actually so much fun. … We mix it up where we start from and then just go crazy.”
Henderson decided to attend the combine to test her abilities against other top players and gauge whether she wanted to keep playing.
“This was really helpful to see like, ‘Oh, I can still compete,’ and … meet a lot of amazing athletes that obviously I’ve watched on the TV [but] haven’t got the privilege of playing,” Henderson said. “… These are the people that are gonna bring the game forward, and I think it was just such a good experience.”
Henderson missed some shots early at the combine but heated up in a drill where players had to make 3-pointers from five different spots. Though she shot just 25.2% from 3-point range this season for Columbia — down from a career-best 34.0% as a junior — she made nine of her last 14 threes in the drill, earning several high-fives from her teammates.
After Henderson finished, she clapped for every single shot her teammate Molly Kaiser took, make or miss. She approached all the other drills the same way, high-fiving teammates at every opportunity and being vocal even during offense-only drills.
“You can just control the controllables always,” Henderson said. “Be a good teammate. Have good energy no matter what. Like, a couple of my shots weren’t going in — doesn’t matter. … It was just a good experience to, I don’t know, battle adversity. I mean, a lot of us took a little bit to get used to the [WNBA] balls, too. And I think it’s just all about how you respond.”
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Turner and Henderson got to talk at the combine for the first time as fellow Ivy League nerds, rather than as extremely competitive players looking to beat each other. They’ve gone head-to-head 12 times in four years, with 10 of those games decided by single digits. And they’ve both left massive marks on their programs and the Ivy League.
Yet, for all their success, it’s still a waiting game to see whether the ball keeps bouncing — and where — now that their college careers are up.
Read more of our coverage of the Lilly Women’s College All-Star Game and Combine.
