“You couldn’t predict [the officiating],” Delaney-Smith said. “You couldn’t adjust your game because you didn’t know what was going to happen.”

But the increased pressure defense from UNC had much more of an impact on Harvard’s struggles at the end of the first half than anything else.

“We picked it up defensively and forced turnovers—that’s when we made our run,” said Brown, who led UNC with four steals.

Monti and the rest of the Harvard offense failed to adjust to the changes at that point and UNC took control of the game.

“I think we weren’t able to set our offenses as much as we would have liked,” she said. “We’ve always been working on backdoor cuts but those require impeccable timing and some real trust and we didn’t react well to their changes.”

Monti closed out the first half with the ghastly stat line of zero assists and points to five turnovers. Delaney-Smith said that UNC’s ability to throw Monti out of her game was more of a factor in the defeat than any of the Tar Heels’ offensive talent.

Harvard was effective stopping the UNC offense early in the game. The Tar Heels made futile attempts to exploit their height advantage inside with 6’6 center Candace Sutton, who didn’t have enough skill to beat the aggressive Crimson defenders.

But Harvard’s defense began to fail when UNC started taking more outside and transition shots.

“I think our triangle-and-two was good until they started hitting in transition and we didn’t react well.” Monti said.

Guarding the three had not been Harvard’s strong point this season, and it was a major factor in its previous worst loss of the season—a 93-77 defeat to Boston University. Last night evoked shades of that defeat, as the Crimson surrendered five first-half threes to Brown.

“[Brown] hit two or three incredible shots over our defense,” Delaney-Smith said. “Other than that it was just a complete 100 percent breakdown on Harvard’s part. She just had complete, wide-open looks.”

The Crimson did a better job of limiting Brown early in the second. On the offensive end, Monti, Peljto and Cserny each came out more relaxed and hit their shots to cut the deficit to 46-34.

But Harvard struggled to cover Tar Heel forward Jennifer Thomas, who scored seven points on a 13-0 UNC run that ended any distant comeback hopes.

Thomas finished with a season-high 18 points after averaging just five per game during the regular season. Senior guard Nikki Teasley helped set her up for the majority of those scores en route to 11 assists on the night.

During the latter part of the second half when the game was well out of reach, Delaney-Smith made more of an effort to play her seniors.