Saturday’s performance was a far cry from Wednesday’s against Manhattan, when the Crimson had just one offensive rebound in the first half. Harvard believed it had the rebounding edge against Dartmouth and exploited it to near-perfection.

“We knew they were vulnerable. We knew their zone offered a lot of weak-side rebounding,” Peljto said.

Downs, But Not Out

Dartmouth junior co-captain Keri Downs entered Saturday’s game averaging 17.7 points per game. In the first half, though, she was held scoreless and had accounted for half of the Big Green’s 10 first-half misses including one air ball.

Then she finished the game as Dartmouth’s leading scorer with 18 points and five threes in the second half.

Monti and Delaney-Smith both said that Harvard didn’t take Downs any lighter in the second half after her abysmal first half.

“In the scouting report we saw that she had 18 per game, and we said at halftime, players like that usually don’t go away,” Monti said.

Downs helped keep Dartmouth in a game that easily could have devolved into a Harvard romp. The Crimson acknowledged that it had defensive breakdowns that it simply needed to improve on.

“You won’t beat certain teams if one kid has five threes in the second half,” Monti said.

The Full Monti

Monti had easily one of the most complete games of her career on Saturday, scoring 15 points—one short of her career-high—and dishing out 10 assists.

“Jenn Monti was a tremendous leader on the floor tonight and every time we needed an extra rebound or run, we got it,” Delaney-Smith said.

Monti had just five three-pointers in her first eight games, but has since lit up opponents for 13 in Harvard’s last five contests, including three against the Big Green. Monti’s improved shooting has been critical to the recent improvement in Peljto’s and Cserny’s production, giving defenses one more threat to worry about.

“I think I got less perfectionist in the past,” Monti said. “I was like, ‘I’m a point guard, that’s not my job.’ But I’ve got a little more liberal and that’s helped opening up the posts.”

Another Fantastic Victory

Saturday’s game drew a spirited crowd of 1,727, far and away the highest total for the Crimson at Lavietes this season. That number was a bit down from the Ivy opener two years ago when the team drew over 2,000, but that game was televised on DirectTV—a fact that was heavily advertised by the team before the game and may have been a cause for the slight increase in support.

Doug Flutie, the current San Diego Chargers quarterback and former Natick High and Boston College star, was among those in attendance. Flutie, whose team lost its last nine games to close out the season at 5-11, was cheering for Harvard throughout the evening.

Also making an appearance on Saturday was Laela Sturdy ’00, Harvard’s leading scorer during the first two post-Feaster years. After graduation, Sturdy—a Mitchell Scholar—attended Trinity College in Dublin where she earned a masters in multimedia systems, before working as a consultant for the World Bank in Kenya in recent months. Sturdy said that throughout the game, she had to fight the urge to throw on a jersey, jump on the court and get in the game.