In the waning minutes of last year’s Ivy League basketball playoff against Dartmouth, a defeated Harvard bench and a lopsided box score told the story that two regular-season thrillers between the Crimson and the Big Green could never tell.

Harvard, come-from-behind darlings in two previous games against Dartmouth, just did not have the interior muscle to contend with bruising Big Green forward Elise Morrison. Throughout last season, the Crimson lacked a true offensive and defensive post presence.

The result? Harvard outhustled and often outshot slower opponents, but the Crimson fell short—literally—against the towering Morrison and her trigger-happy Dartmouth teammates.

“We didn’t really have the inside presence,” Harvard co-captain Maureen McCaffery said. “They guarded us close on the perimeter, and we couldn’t really get shots off and couldn’t make things happen.”

After the season-ending defeat to the Big Green, the situation was obvious: either Harvard beef up its inside game or it get used to finishing in second place.

The Crimson’s recent interior dominance suggests the former. The Crimson has outscored its opponents in the paint 126-79 in the last four games, going 3-1 over that stretch. This year, Harvard welcomed three freshmen over 6’3, integrated 6’1 sophomore forward Adrian Budischak into the offense after she missed 2004-2005 due to injury, and added athletic junior forward Christiana Lackner into the mix.

“You can’t stress how important it is to have so much balance,” sophomore guard Lindsay Hallion said. “It’s always dangerous if you have a team that lives and dies by the three, because sometimes the ball is not going to fall. But if you have people in there who are strong and who are going to fight for rebounds, you’ll be able to get offense from that.”

And the Crimson, as of late, has been doing just that. Where before the post was bare and the rebounding effort marginal at best, now the lane—and the Harvard bench—is swarming with talent, size, bulk, and offensive touch. The Crimson’s effective in-and-out motion offense emphasizes a high-low post game that facilitates movement on the low block and cutting on the perimeter. Once the post game is established and the defense collapses, Harvard’s forwards are quick to find the open guard on the perimeter.

It is that offensive balance, that versatility of offensive production, that has left Ivy opponents guessing as to which offensive element to shut down first. Leave the perimeter open, and Laura Robinson or McCaffery will knock down threes all day. Pressure the guards, and Harvard’s revived post game will punish the interior defense and end up at the free throw line more often than not.

“Recently it’s showed how dominant our posts have been,” Hallion said. “They’ve really been game-changing. They’ve really set the tempo and given a lot of teams trouble.”

Take Harvard freshman Katie Rollins, who missed the first 10 games of the season with a shoulder injury. In her first eight collegiate games, Rollins has hit double figures five times and thrice led the Crimson in scoring.

Against Dartmouth—Morrison is out for the year with a torn ligament in her foot—Rollins was practically unstoppable, pivoting gracefully and tossing in layup after layup over the smaller Sydney Scott.

There’s Lackner, a gritty forward whose effort on the defensive end is trumped only by her willingness to dive on the floor after any semblance of a loose ball.

Lackner’s defense and acumen on the offensive glass kept Harvard in its first Ivy showdown with Brown, though the Crimson eventually bowed out 64-62 on a buzzer-beater.

More importantly, however, is the depth of the Harvard frontcourt, a luxury that coach Kathy Delaney-Smith could barely even dream of a year ago.

“We had no low post players last year,” Delaney-Smith said. “No one who actually liked the low post game. I haven’t had a true low post player in 20 years here. But you can’t pound these kids.”

With a solid rotation of Rollins, Budischak, Lackner, freshman Emma Moretzsohn, and sophomore Lauren Fried, Harvard rarely runs into foul trouble and can set up in three-forward sets that exploit smaller defensive units.

Last year, the perimeter-oriented McCaffery was often forced to play the power forward slot.

This year, the 6’1 forward has moved to the three-spot on the perimeter, creating matchup problems for smaller players or slower posts who attempt to close out against her quick release.

That frees up the lane for Moretzsohn, who at 6’7 is the league’s tallest player by four inches and already has an automatic hook shot from the right side.

Budischak has battled injuries throughout the year, but she’s proven to be a consistent threat close to the basket as well. Rollins, finally, has the finest touch of them all and plays extraordinarily well with her back to the basket.

“[The post game] makes us so much more versatile,” McCaffery said. “We’ve had some strong post players, but never so many who are that strong on the inside. That’s something we’ll start to see in the second round of Ivies. People will be really scared of our post game and that will open up things on the perimeter.”

—Staff writer Aidan E. Tait can be reached at atait@fas.harvard.edu.