No. 7-seeded Michigan State takes on No. 10-seeded Harvard on Saturday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. It will be the first-ever meeting between the Spartans and the Crimson.
The game will be played as part of the Spokane 1 regional and is being played in Raleigh, North Carolina at the James T. Valvano Arena inside the Reynolds Coliseum. Tip is set for 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time on ESPNews with Wes Durham and Angela Taylor on the broadcast.
Michigan State enters the NCAA Tournament for a second-straight appearance and third in the past five seasons, bringing a 21-9 record on the season with it, including an 11-7 mark in Big Ten play. The 10+ win mark in league play is a second-straight for the Spartans, last having won at least 10 games in 2015-2016 when the program went 13-5 in conference play.
While MSU is not new to March Madness as a program, the roster this season largely is for those in the Green and White during their college careers. The Spartans feature just four players with tournament experience. Those include Graduate guard/forward Julia Ayrault as the most seasoned veteran on the roster in that regard. Additionally, junior guards Theryn Hallock and Abbey Kimball along with senior guard/forward Jocelyn Tate all made their debuts in the tourney last season with MSU.
Ayrault played in two games so far in her career, coming off the bench to score seven points with two blocks in a 79-75 loss to Iowa State as the No. 10 seed in 2021. Then last season against North Carolina, Ayrault scored 14 points with nine rebounds against the No. 8 seeded Tar Heels in a 59-56 loss. Hallock, Kimball, and Tate all made appearances last season.
Other players that have NCAA Tournament experience, but not for the Spartans, include junior guard Emma Shumate while playing at Ohio State. Transfers Grace VanSlooten, Nyla Hampton, and Jaddan Simmons will all be playing in their first NCAA Tournament.
Head coach Robyn Fralick is the first in program history to lead the Spartans to two-straight NCAA Tournament appearances in her first two seasons at the helm in East Lansing.
MSU will look to bounce back from a disappointing second-round loss to Iowa in the Big Ten Tournament two weeks ago. The Spartans remain near the top of the rankings in plenty of categories nationally to do just that, though. MSU is No. 25 in assist/turnover ratio at 1.21 and are 10th in the country in assist rate at 18.3 per game. Similar to the men, the Spartans are also getting lots of production from the bench, checking in at No. 27 in bench points at 24.8 per game.
MSU finished the regular season third in scoring offense in the Big Ten and 14th in the county, averaging 79.5 points per game.
On the defensive end, Michigan State is 16th in the country at 5.1 blocks per game and are eighth in the country in steals per game, averaging 12.4. The Spartans are also just three steals shy of the single-season program record with 373 on the season so far. The current record stands at 375 set over 37 games in the 2004-2005 season when the Spartans were national runner-up that year.
Individually, VanSlooten is 48th in the country in field goal percentage, hitting 53.17% of her shots. She also leads MSU in scoring (15.4 ppg) and is second on the team in rebounds per game (7.0) and in blocks on the season (31). VanSlooten has scored double figures in the past 17-straight games.
Ayrault is second on the team in scoring with 14.8 ppg while leading the team on the boards (7.4 rpg) and in blocks on the season (43). Hallock rounds out players in double figures scoring with 13.7 ppg while ranking third on the team in helpers (65 assists on the season). Seven different Spartans have finished with the team lead in scoring in games played this season, overall.
Three other Spartans active on the roster are averaging over five points per game, including Tate (7.7), Simmons (6.4), and Ines Sotelo (5.9). Simmons leads the team in assists (98) and Tate leads in steals (68). Hampton is just shy of the 5.0 ppg mark with 4.8 while ranking second in steals (62) and third in assists (80).
As for Harvard, the Crimson are making their seventh NCAA Tournament all-time and first since 2007. Notably, Harvard boasts the only NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament upset of a No. 1 seed when the 16th-seeded Crimson downed Stanford 71-67 inside Maples Pavillion in the 1998 tournament. That victory remains the lone one for Harvard in March Madness.
The 10 seed this year is the highest ever for Harvard and comes after the program's 12th Ivy League title notched Harvard the auto-bid. The Crimson downed Columbia 74-71 in Providence, Rhode Island to secure the conference tournament title following winning its 12th regular season Ivy League title as well.
Harvard finished the regular season 24-4 overall and 11-3 in league play. That marks the most wins in a season in program history. The Crimson also hold a 2-0 neutral court record and 12-2 road record on the year.
The Crimson are led by head coach Carrie Moore, a 2007 graduate of Western Michigan. In fact, Moore was a player for the Broncos when Fralick as a graduate assistant in Kalamazoo. Moore was also an assistant at Michigan during the 2021-2022 season. She is in her third season as leader of the Crimson with a 60-28 record overall and a 29-13 mark in conference play. Moore also boasts a 3-1 record in the postseason in Cambridge after leading Harvard to the Great 8 in the 2023 WNIT, the deepest run in program history.
Senior guard Harmoni Turner leads Harvard in multiple categories, including scoring (22.5 ppg), rebounds (5.4 rpg), assists (94), steals (78), and in 3-point field goal percentage (36.4%). Senior guard Elena Rodriguez is second on the team in scoring and the only other player averaging double figures with 11.9 ppg. Rodriguez is also second in assists (63) and blocks (19) while checking in at third in rebounds (4.3 rpg) and steals (44). She leads the team in field goal percentage (54.2%).
Junior guard Gabby Anderson is second on the team in rebounds (4.4 rpg) and steals (48). Junior guard Saniyah Glenn-Bello leads the team in blocks (22) and is third on the team in scoring (6.7 ppg).
Michigan State and Harvard shared three common opponents this season: Yale, Indiana (No. 9), and Northwestern. The Spartans went 3-0 against those teams, while the Crimson were 4-0 (beating Yale twice in league play).
Harvard faced then No. 25 Indiana on Nov. 7, downing the Hoosiers72-68 in overtime in Bloomington, and Northwestern in Evanston on Nov. 23, defeating the Wildcats 75-50. In Ivy League play, the Crimson beat Yale in both meetings, 61-43 in New Haven and 91-35 in Cambridge.
MSU defeated Yale 100-44 on Nov. 8 at the Breslin Center as well as downing NU 89-75 on Feb. 2 in Evanston and IU 73-65 in East Lansing on Feb. 23.
Overall, the Spartans played 14 teams that made the tournament this season, going 7-9 against them. Non-conference opponents include wins over California and Vanderbilt along with a loss to Alabama.
Going to the history books, MSU is 6-0 all-time against Ivy League members. That includes 2-0 marks against Dartmouth and Yale along with 1-0 records against Brown and Princeton.
As for NCAA Tournament records, the Spartans will be competing for the first time in the tournament in Raleigh, but the third overall in North Carolina. The Spartans played in Chapel Hill in 1997 and in 2014. Overall, Michigan State boasts a 19-19 record in the tournament and have failed to advance out of the first round three out of the most recent four trips, last doing so in 2019.
MSU is one of 12 Big Ten programs to make the Big Dance this year, a new league record. MSU is joined by No. 1 seeds UCLA and USC with the Bruins as the overall No. 1 seed in the tournament and in the same region as the Spartans.
Additional bids include Ohio State and Maryland as No. 4 seeds, Iowa and Michigan as No. 6 seeds, along with Illinois (No. 8), Indiana(No. 9), Nebraska (No. 10), Oregon (No. 10), and Washington (No. 11).
The winner of the Michigan State-Harvard game will advance to the second round to meet the winner of No. 2 seed and host, North Carolina State and No. 15-seeded Vermont on Monday.
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