On the opening possession of the fourth quarter of Princeton and Harvardโs Ivy League opener on Dec. 31, Princeton junior guard Kaitlyn Chen hit a pull-up jump shot to trim the Tigersโ deficit to four.
โOof, thatโs tough,โ Harvard head coach Carrie Moore thought to herself.
On the next possession, Harvardโs own dynamic guard, sophomore Harmoni Turner, drove into the lane as the shot clock entered single digits, made a pull-up of her own, and got fouled.
โThat’s tougher, though,โ Moore thought.
The Crimson led by seven after Turnerโs free throw and held off the Tigers down the stretch, winning 67-59 in front of a sizable home crowd and a national television audience. Harvard snapped Princetonโs 42-game conference winning streak, the longest in Ivy League history, and handed Princeton its first conference loss since February 2019.
It was the first conference win for first-year Harvard head coach Carrie Moore and the first conference loss for Princetonโs Carla Berube. Berube took the Princeton job in May 2019 and was 30-0 in the Ivy League โ across regular-season and tournament games โ entering Saturdayโs game.
Though Princeton is the four-time defending Ivy champion, the loss was not a seismic upset. Princeton is the second-best team in the conference this season and Harvard is the third-best based on NET ranking; the teams entered the game ranked 52nd and 94th. On Princetonโs โGet Stops Podcastโ on Dec. 29, Berube referenced Harvardโs โhigh-octaneโ offense and said that it would take โa great defensive effort, great โฆ transition defense, getting out on 3-point shooters, [and] communicating really wellโ for Princeton to win.
Her Hoop Stats gave Princeton a 70.6% chance of beating Harvard, but the projected margin was just six points. That is closer than any conference game Princeton played last year except for a five-point Ivy Tournament win over Harvard on the same court.
Yet the loss shattered Princetonโs unprecedented run of dominance, which came at times with an air of inevitability. Only a few current seniors across the league were even around for the Tigersโ previous conference loss. Saturdayโs loss also has major implications for the Ivy title race, with Columbia and now Harvard looking like strong challengers. And it could have ramifications for Princeton with the NCAA Tournament selection committee, as it was Princetonโs first loss to a team ranked outside the top 25 of the NET rankings.
โIt’s a huge win any way you look at it,โ Moore told The Next two days later. โโฆ It’s a huge hump for [the Harvard players] to get over together. โฆ It was a great way to ring in the new year.โ
Before Saturdayโs game, Harvard hadnโt played since a Dec. 21 victory over Boston University and had played just two games in the previous three weeks due to final exams and the holidays. But the Crimson didnโt look rusty at all, shooting 43.8% in the first quarter and scoring eight points off Princeton turnovers to lead by nine. Senior guard McKenzie Forbes assisted on two of Harvardโs first three baskets, then started scoring herself, finishing the quarter with a game-high 10 points on 4-for-4 shooting.
โKenzie showed that she’s a senior and she’s been there before,โ Moore said. โAnd she just stepped into that moment so perfectly to start that game, and we needed it. We needed it to just kind of be like, โAll right, we’re good.โโ
Princetonโs final lead of the game came with 7:30 left in the first quarter, and Harvard led by as many as 13 on three occasions in the second quarter. The Crimsonโs shooting percentages dipped in the second and third quarters, but they weathered Princetonโs comeback attempts and closed the game by shooting 53.9% from the field and 81.8% from the free throw line in the fourth quarter.
โI thought that was our best 40-minute game from an execution standpoint and from a toughness standpoint all year,โ Moore said, โand just, what better timing than that one?โ
One player who stepped up in the fourth quarter was junior guard Lola Mullaney, whom Moore has been challenging along with Forbes to use their experience to lift the teamโs level of play. Mullaney had made just one shot, a layup, in the first three quarters before sinking back-to-back 3-pointers with under eight minutes left to push the Harvard lead from three to nine.
โWe called a play and it was for her and she nailed that thing,โ Moore said. โAnd โฆ I was like, โGive it to her again. Run it again.โโ
Princeton called a timeout after Mullaneyโs second triple, and Forbes raced over to celebrate with Mullaney. She then high-fived Moore and told her, โGreat call, Coach!โ
Forbes (17 points), Turner (17) and Mullaney (12) all finished in double figures, and Forbes chipped in a game-high five assists. But while most of the attention usually focuses on the Harvard offense โ which ranks in the top quintile nationally in points per 100 possessions and effective field goal percentage โ the Harvard defense played a huge role in the upset, too. The Crimson picked up the Tigers full-court and often forced them to play one-on-one in the halfcourt. Princeton had just 11 assists on its 24 baskets and attempted just seven free throws, and only Chen, with 21 points, scored in double figures.
Harvard also outrebounded Princeton 40-39, which was surprising given that Princeton forward Ellie Mitchell ranks third in the country in rebounding average. Mitchell had 14 rebounds, seven of which were offensive, to increase her average to 12.3 per game, but Harvard turned 16 offensive rebounds into 15 second-chance points. That was one of Mooreโs keys to the game, along with limiting turnovers and making timely shots.
Most of all, though, there was a belief in the Harvard locker room that Princeton could be beaten. The Crimson seeded that belief last season with the close loss in the Ivy Tournament, and then Moore introduced the motto โBelieve itโ when she was hired, encouraging her players to believe that they could do great things. Ahead of the game, Moore leaned into the familiarity she had with Princeton from being on the Tigersโ staff from 2008-10 and 2016-19, telling her team that she knew some of the Princeton players well โand they’re human, just like you are.โ
Moore also pointed to several top-10 upsets in the days leading up to the game as evidence that anything can happen in conference play and reinforced something she has told her players all season: They play better when they have more practice time to prepare. And Harvard was especially prepared for Princeton, with four days of practice leading up to the game and team-building activities over the past few weeks that were designed to improve their weaknesses on and off the court.
Those activities included an exercise in which each player had to direct a blindfolded teammate around obstacles on the court, an exercise in which each player had to help their teammate draw a picture without being able to see it, and a dinner with several alums. Allison Feaster, arguably the greatest player in Ivy League history, and Megan Basil Song, the point guard who teamed with Feaster to win three Ivy titles, spoke to the โstarstruckโ team at the dinner.
โThey talked to us and shared wisdom of their championship teams and how they prepared โฆ and just gave us some good spirit heading into that game,โ Moore said. โโฆ I think that stuff was extremely valuable.โ
The result was the first win for Harvard against Princeton since February 2018, before anyone on either team had enrolled. And it was just the second Harvard win in the series in the past nine years after the Crimson had dominated in the two decades from 1990-2009.
So Moore got a water bath and a dance party in a jubilant postgame locker room, and she was brimming with pride and determined to celebrate. โYou work so hard for those moments, so you really have to take the time to enjoy it,โ she said in a Harvard highlight video. โAnd I was ready. I was hoping that they had all the water in the world, and they were hyped and ready to go.โ
While the win could be season-defining for Harvard, the loss shouldnโt be for Princeton. There is plenty of time to recover, with 13 more regular-season conference games plus the tournament. Per Her Hoop Stats, Princeton has at least an 80% chance to win 11 of those 13 games, including an 86.1% chance to beat Harvard in the rematch on Feb. 24.
The tricky part is that one of the more evenly projected games is the next one, against Columbia at home on Jan. 6. The Tigers have a 62.7% chance to win, but if they donโt, they could find themselves 0-2 and playing catch-up for a chunk of the season.
โTo start off the season with first Harvard and then Columbia is tough,โ Berube said on Princetonโs podcast, โbut it’ll show us where we’re at โฆ To start off with two of the tougher teams can really help us in the long run.โ
The Crimson, meanwhile, have Brown and Yale on the horizon and a signature win in their rearview mirror. They made a statement to the 1,278 fans in attendance on Saturday โ over 300 more than had attended any of the womenโs games in last seasonโs Ivy Tournament. And they made a statement to themselves, raising the bar for their execution on both ends and showing that they could close out games against top teams.
โOur motto โBelieve itโ has been huge for us all year,โ Moore said. โBut I think in that particular moment โฆ all the belief that we needed was right there in that locker room. โฆ
โThey really believed it and they thought we could do it, and we went out and did it.โ
