CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—The Harvard women’s basketball team knew it needed to stick to its game plan to have any chance of pulling off an upset against fourth-seeded North Carolina, and it did that for the game’s first eight minutes.

But after that, the Tar Heels exploited Harvard breakdowns on both the ends of the floor and rolled to an 85-58 victory.

Harvard (22-6) kept within three points of UNC (25-8) through the game’s first 11 minutes, but a 14-2 Tar Heel run buried the Crimson in a hole it couldn’t escape.

UNC forward Coretta Brown burned Harvard with 10 points in a row during that stretch en route to a career-high 28. She tallied 21 points and five threes in the first half alone.

Harvard Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, nationally renowned for leading the 1998 Harvard team to an upset of top-seeded Stanford, couldn’t script another Cinderella story this season.

“[Brown’s threes were] something we came into the game trying to prevent,” Delaney-Smith said. “That gave North Carolina a lot of adrenaline and a big boost, and we sort of lost our composure at that point. You can’t beat a team like North Carolina and come that far away from your game plan.”

Freshman Reka Cserny showed poise beyond her years leading Harvard with 16 points and shooting 8-for-9 from the line. Sophomore Hana Peljto had 13 points, but none in the first half after an opening-minute jumper.

Harvard kept pace with North Carolina for the first 10 minutes using a variety of offensive weapons. After Peljto’s jumper, co-captain Katie Gates—Harvard’s early-game go-to player so many times in her career—hit two threes in the second minute to put the Crimson up 8-4. Cserny scored Harvard’s next four points—two on free throws after drawing an acrobatic foul and two on a baseline jumper.

“The key for us was that we didn’t want to be like a deer in the headlights for the first five minutes, and we weren’t,” senior guard Jenn Monti said.

The Crimson’s chances began to sour as Cserny drew her second foul seven minutes into the game and Delaney-Smith sat for the next five minutes.

In Cserny’s absence on the court, Monti found success by hitting sophomore forward Tricia Tubridy on a backdoor cut, but thereafter the Harvard offense struggled with turnovers. When Cserny re-entered the game, Harvard trailed 23-16. The Crimson had managed to overcome deficits due to Cserny’s foul trouble in past games, but a seven-point deficit to North Carolina was too much to overcome.

The first-half ineffectiveness of Ivy Player of the Year Hana Peljto made any consistent Crimson scoring difficult to come by. In going 0-for-6 in the final minute, Peljto earned good looks at the basket—the kind she typically hit during the regular season—but her shots didn’t fall.

The performance was a continuation of her 6-of-23 shooting effort against Dartmouth. UNC executed Dartmouth’s successful game plan against Peljto—be physical until the referees start calling the fouls. They never did.

“[The Tar Heels] were more physical for me than I was used to,” Peljto said.

Delaney-Smith felt that both teams suffered because of the referees’ inconsistency.