Co-captain Kit Metoyer drove hard into the lane, putting her shot a little too hard off the glass. Senior forward Shilpa Tummala, however, was there to clean up, catching and laying the ball back in one, smooth motion. It wasn’t pretty, but just like that, the Harvard women’s basketball team had completed one of the greatest comebacks in collegiate women’s basketball history.
That basket, part of a 72-69 win on the road against rival Yale, capped off a program-record 23-point comeback that also marked the fourth-largest comeback in NCAA Division I history.
“I’ve never experienced so much emotion, so much passion, so much grit, so much toughness in a single game,” Tummala said. “That game is a testament to who we are as a team and our ability.”
After Yale guard Whitney Wyckoff sank the second of two free throws to put the Bulldogs up 40-17 with just over two minutes left in the first half, the situation seemed bleak. Metoyer and Tummala looked at each other with dazed expressions; Harvard was down 23 and its two sharpshooters were shell-shocked.
“[Coach] Kathy [Delaney-Smith] had pulled me and Kit out and yelled at us, saying, ‘Where are you guys? You look like you’re playing like a deer in the headlights,’” Tummala said. “Me and Kit were standing there, thinking, ‘We’re down 23. This is awful,’ so we sit down and don’t say anything for those thirty seconds.”
Delaney-Smith drew up a play called San Jose, which is meant to isolate a three-pointer shooter along the arc. The ball was first inbounded to Metoyer, who rotated the ball over to Tummala, who was covered and swung the ball over to freshman guard Sydney Skinner. With her defender overcommitted on Tummala and the help-defense too far away, Skinner set herself, rose, and sank the three that stopped her team’s proverbial bleeding.
That three-pointer would ignite the Crimson on a 14-0 run to end the half. That shot was followed up closely by a three-point play from co-captain AnnMarie Healy and another Skinner triple to cut the deficit to 14. A Metoyer three and pair of Skinner free throws later, the whistle sounded with Harvard down just nine heading into the halftime locker room.
“It was unreal,” Tummala said. “This kid had come out of nowhere, had hit threes back to back. No one could stop her, and we locked down of defense and hit shots on the other hand. Going into halftime it was a manageable deficit, and the momentum was all in our favor.”
The game, however, could not have started any more poorly for the visitors. The Bulldogs began red hot from the field, shooting 57.1 percent in the first quarter and making 8-of-11 first-half three-pointers. The Crimson, meanwhile, were sloppy, committing four turnovers in the first quarter to the Yale’s one.
“No one showed up in the first half,” Delaney-Smith said. “The players out on the floor were unrecognizable to me, in their demeanor, in their connection with each other, in the system…. The combination of us having a bad night and them playing a phenomenal game of basketball was bad.”
After Skinner’s shooting brought Harvard back into the game, there could only be one outcome for coach Delaney-Smith’s squad. A pair of Yale layups stretched the Bulldogs’ lead to 13 to start the second half, but Crimson runs of 11-3 and 14-6 quickly erased that advantage.
Ice cold free throw shooting from Tummala and freshman guard Madeline Raster pushed Harvard’s lead to five after the go-ahead Tummala putback, but a triple from Yale’s Nyasha Sarju and a missed Metoyer free throw gave the Bulldogs the ball, down three, with five seconds left.
Poor communication and hesitation prevented the hosts from even attempting a shot, however, and the Crimson were left to celebrate one of the most exciting nights in program history.
—Staff writer Manav Khandelwal can be reached at manavkhandelwal@college.harvard.edu.