For most basketball teams, success begins on the hardwood. For Harvard women’s basketball this year, it may have started on the Charles River.
Last fall, after a pre-season practice had wrapped up, first-year head coach Carrie Moore took her team out with Harvard women’s lightweight rowing team to get a taste of navigating as a team on the water. Unfortunately, the conditions weren’t the best.
“It was, like, freezing and raining and we had just had practice and [Moore was] like, ‘All right, let’s go, let’s go to the river!’” said senior guard and captain Maggie McCarthy, who had never been rowing before.
Moore — who herself had also never rowed before — admits that she was scared. But the rowers, who were sprinkled among the basketball players in the boats, assured them that the odds of tipping over were low. After that, the reason for the trip started to come through.
“I think you learn a lot on the boat,” Moore said. “Just in terms of it’s not an individual sport by any means. If one person is off at all in terms of their technique, the boat is shifting left or right. The balance has to be perfect.”
It’s not the typical exercise for a basketball program that for 40 seasons was led by Kathy Delaney-Smith, after whom the head coaching position at Harvard is named. But in her first year as skipper, Moore has steered the Crimson’s ship to the Ivy League tournament with a 16-10 record in her first year, two wins away from an automatic berth in the NCAA tourney. For Moore, it’s all part of the plan as she aims to keep Harvard on the course Delaney-Smith set — and even go beyond.
Big shoes to fill
It would be natural for just about anyone to be intimidated when trying to fill the big shoes of Delaney-Smith. Over her four decades at Harvard, she racked up 630 wins, winning nearly 70% of her games in the Ivy League along the way.
But for Moore, who came to Harvard from the University of Michigan, that torch wasn’t a burden.
“I don’t know if I necessarily have ever felt it as pressure,” Moore said. “I think, if anything, I just see it as a tremendous opportunity. Because she proved that you can win at a very high level here. Which means that it’s possible for us to do what we want to do.”
For players like senior guard and captain McKenzie Forbes, one of the things that helped with the transition is that Moore made a lasting first impression.
“I feel like the person we got that day is like the same Coach Moore that we have to this day, and I think everyone can appreciate that,” Forbes said. “And like feel that when you’re meeting someone new, you can kind of like get that vibe of like, ‘OK, what kind of person are they?’ And I think she’s very authentic, very genuine with us.”
Authenticity on and off the court
On the court, the seeds of that authenticity are on full display. During the regular season finale against Dartmouth at Harvard’s Lavietes Pavilion, Moore roamed the sidelines, her hands in her pockets, picking up every little detail and pulling players to the side for quick conversations the moment they stepped off the court.
Even though the Big Green hadn’t won an Ivy League game all year, Moore coached with the focus you'd expect of someone in the Final Four. Harvard would go on to win in a 64-40 route.
It’s the kind of attention to detail that Harvard will need as it heads into the Ivy League Tournament. But Moore’s core mantra of “Believe It” has the team feeling like they can run the table even as they face Columbia, the only Ivy League team Harvard hasn’t beaten this year.
“This whole season, we’ve had a lot of ups and downs and changing of the lineups with different injuries, different players being out. But she’s always like, ‘Believe It,’” McCarthy said with a snap of her finger.
“All we have is all we need,” Forbes added.
Over the course of the season, Moore’s learned a lot. One of the main lessons she’s come to understand is just how much patience the profession requires. She wants to hang banners and doesn’t want to settle for being third or fourth in the conference. She wants to recruit players who can change the trajectory of the program, and she hopes to make them into better people and players.
Moore knows that’s coming. But if basketball is anything like rowing down a river, then even the best coaches have to get used to the water first.
“I’m a Taurus and I’m extremely stubborn. And it’s incredibly hard for me to not have it all right now,” Moore said. “But I think I’ve learned that the lessons and the enjoyment is in the journey, not necessarily the destination. But we’ll get there.”
