Less than five minutes into Columbia’s press conference after losing in the Ivy League Tournament semifinals, senior co-captain Perri Page declared, “We are winning the WBIT. I can tell you that right now.”
While Page and Columbia were pretty certain they’d be in the Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT), Harvard hoped it had done enough to secure a berth. The Crimson finished third in the Ivy League regular season behind Princeton and Columbia, but they upset Columbia in the Ivy Madness semifinals before losing to Princeton in the final.
On Sunday evening, both Columbia and Harvard made the WBIT field as No. 4 seeds. They will each host first-round games on Thursday at 7 p.m. Eastern time: Columbia will face St. John’s, and Harvard will take on Navy.
That timeline gave Columbia and Harvard about 94 hours to regroup and prepare for unfamiliar opponents. They had to move on from their NCAA Tournament dreams and find a new purpose: Extend their seasons as long as possible in the WBIT, which has been the second-best postseason tournament since its inception in 2024. (Before then, the WNIT was the second-best tournament.)
“I feel like the teams that can really turn the page emotionally, mentally, physically and be as present as possible are the teams that that go on and advance,” Harvard head coach Carrie Moore told reporters on Tuesday. “And … it’s hard to turn the page when you’re devastated about the outcome of being so close to achieve something you want so badly.”
Columbia is 20-8 overall and went 11-3 in the Ivy League regular season. Head coach Megan Griffith told reporters on Wednesday that she considers it one of her coaching staff’s best seasons in her 10 years leading Columbia. That’s because the coaches adapted to losing All-Ivy guards Kitty Henderson and Cecelia Collins to graduation and helped nearly every returner take on a bigger role, but they also resisted the temptation to change more than they needed to.
For Griffith, the missing piece this year, compared with last season’s team that won a First Four game in the NCAA Tournament, is cohesion. The players have great chemistry and love for one another, but in tough moments, they’ve sometimes drifted apart instead of coming together. As a result, there are times where they don’t look like themselves or play connected basketball, including in a home loss to Cornell in the conference opener and in losses to Harvard on March 7 and in Friday’s semifinal.
“We’ve just been really inconsistent, especially when fear comes into the situation,” Griffith said after Friday’s loss. “… The moment gets too big.”
To Griffith, this week feels similar to 2023, when her Lions were poised to secure their first-ever Division I NCAA Tournament bid but couldn’t summon their best basketball at the right time. They needed overtime to beat Cornell to end the regular season, then were upset by Harvard in the Ivy League Tournament, which cost them an at-large bid.
But missing the NCAA Tournament also took the pressure off, and the Lions regrouped and made a run to the WNIT final — even getting revenge on Harvard in the quarterfinals. That 2023 postseason took the Columbia-Harvard rivalry to another level, and they have been on a collision course ever since. It’s almost like the teams are aggressive bumper car drivers, fighting to take up the same space near the top of the league.
“I have a template for a lot of things right now in this league,” Griffith said about handling this week and whether the 2023 team provided a blueprint. “But this team is different than that [2023] team. We had seven seniors on that team, so this team is going to have to grow up really fast if they want to do what that team did.”
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That growing up started on Sunday, when Columbia’s players got back in the gym on their own after their early Ivy Madness exit. “It’s not something I’ve told them to do,” Griffith said on Wednesday. “It’s just like, that’s what our leaders, the next leaders, have done [in recent years].”
And as the players have grappled with their emotions over the past few days, Griffith has, too.
“It’s been up and down,” she said about her mental state. “I’m not gonna lie: I’m a really passionate person about this program in particular and how we do things. And it’s been heartache. It’s been feeling prepared and ready and you’re all in and going to attack. It’s been a lot of things. …
“[But] give me a day, and I’m already moved on to the next thing. So since we found out on Sunday night at 9 p.m. that we were playing St. John’s, it’s been full throttle.”
Throughout the week, the Lions have had hard practices, but the sessions have been a little shorter because some players are out with injuries. It’s spring break right now, so the players are treating this time without homework or classes like they’re professional players.
Thursday’s game, and any additional WBIT games, will be the ultimate test of the Lions’ cohesion. Will they lead each other through any adversity, or will fear creep back in? Griffith said she’s seen senior co-captain Susie Rafiu elevate her game this week, so she’s hopeful Rafiu and Page can lift their teammates and help everyone play with nothing to lose.
On the other hand, Harvard played like it had nothing to lose against Columbia on Friday. That was its fourth Ivy League Tournament upset in as many years, with three of them coming against Columbia. The Crimson nearly got another upset in the championship game on Saturday, as they were tied with top-seeded Princeton with under four minutes to play. But the Tigers closed the game on a 12-2 run to secure the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Coming that close to a second straight NCAA Tournament bid ripped the Crimson’s hearts out, Moore said postgame. But it also was a huge feat after graduating 2025 Ivy League Player of the Year Harmoni Turner and fellow All-Ivy selection Elena Rodriguez. Harvard had to replace more than half of its scoring this season, and no returner had averaged even 7 points per game in 2024-25.
“I don’t know, if we said we would be in this position at the beginning of the year, if a lot of people would have believed us,” Moore said on Tuesday. “… To be inches away from getting an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament with this particular team, I think, speaks volumes in terms of just where we’re at culturally and the players in our program and the heart that is within our program.”
The Crimson are 18-11 this season and 10-4 in regular-season Ivy League play. They weren’t sure they’d make the WBIT, and Sunday’s selection show forced them to sweat it out. Host Haley Jordan didn’t say their name until more than 10 minutes had elapsed in the 13-minute show.
But their preparation had started the night before, while they drove more than five hours home from Ithaca, New York. For about an hour and a half, Moore sat with junior co-captain and leading scorer Karlee White, who scored 10 of Harvard’s 12 points in the late run that tied the championship game but fouled out with 2:02 remaining.
Moore sensed that White was feeling a lot of the emotions that she herself was feeling. So Moore gave her a long hug after the game ended, then texted her as they boarded the bus to offer her a seat at the front and a listening ear.
“There’s a lot of similar emotion and sadness and frustration and devastation,” Moore said. “And so to sit with someone that you know gets it … meant a lot to me, meant a lot to her. And then obviously the conversation starts with the game. …
“You need to get that stuff out in order to really be able to respond and turn the page. You’ve got to feel that; you’ve got to get it out. So I tried to just be an ear for her [and] offer up a little bit of … perspective of what I’ve seen from people’s junior year to senior years, and how adversity can help you grow in the greatest ways.”
After the bus arrived in Cambridge early Sunday morning, Moore took the day off. Everyone watched the selection show on their own, and Moore tried to soothe her voice — which had almost disappeared the night before — with water, rest and hot coffee.
“I talk to our girls about leaving it all out there, and I felt like I left it all out there from a vocal standpoint,” she said with a laugh.
On Monday, Harvard held a team meeting where Moore talked about staying present and being grateful for having another week together. The team also did a film session and lifted weights, but Moore sensed her players needed another day to feel whole again before they practiced.
By Tuesday, the players had recovered physically, but there were still emotional wounds. So Moore tried to make practice as competitive as possible.
“To just move through the emotion while you’re competing and working your tail off, to me, that’s the only remedy,” she said.
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Like Griffith, Moore has looked to the 2023 season for clues on how to approach this week. After upsetting Columbia in the semifinals that season, Harvard pushed Princeton to the brink in the final, leading with a minute to go before losing by 6.
The Crimson struggled to move past that loss in their opening-round WNIT game against Towson, and Moore had to call an early timeout to help them refocus. This week, Moore told her team that story. She knows that a similar slow start could cost Harvard against Navy, which won the Patriot League regular-season title.
Whereas the Lions usually enjoy weeks where classes aren’t in session, those times have felt like more of a struggle for the Crimson. Harvard is also on spring break this week, leaving the campus quiet and freezing and the players missing their friends outside of the team.
But Moore has a potential ace up her sleeve for that, too. When she first watched film of Navy star Zanai Barnett-Gay, the Patriot League Player and Defensive Player of the Year, she immediately thought of Page. Her staff pointed out that the 5’11 Page is much bigger than the 5’8 Barnett-Gay, but Moore saw two tenacious rebounders who set the tone for their teams.
Plus, she knows that her players tend to focus extra intently when they’re preparing for Columbia.
“We seem to really lock in on that team,” Moore said. “So as many references as I feel like I can make to them, then maybe that’ll help us.”
With Berube, Moore and Griffith the Ivy League is blessed with 3 of the nation’s best coaches. Your writing highlights their excellence. I hope they remain in the league for many seasons to come. They are setting a high bar for the other Ancient Eight programs.