The Harvard women’s basketball team couldn’t have been happier to see the friendly rims of Lavietes Pavilion while sharpshooting its way to a 91-74 win over crosstown rival Boston University yesterday.

Co-captain Hana Peljto moved into second place on Harvard’s all-time scoring list when a first-half layup pushed her past Tammy Butler ’95 and her 1,605 points. With Peljto’s 25-point performance yesterday, the forward now has 1,626 career points, behind only the 2,312 of Allison Feaster ’98.

Defending America East champion BU (2-4) stayed close to the Crimson (4-3) throughout the first half, allowing Harvard no more than a 10-point lead and closing the gap to five, 37-32, by halftime.

But junior center Reka Cserny would not let the Terriers creep any closer, as she exploded for 22 of her 24 points in the second frame and twice scored eight Crimson points in a row.

BU and Harvard exchanged baskets through the first five minutes of the second half, but with 15:55 remaining in the game, co-captain Tricia Tubridy grabbed the momentum for good. Tubridy stole the ball from Terrier guard Katie Terhune under the BU basket and immediately converted a layup, extending Harvard’s lead to eight at 48-40. The Crimson pushed its advantage to as many as 22 points on two occasions, both on Cserny tallies with less than five minutes to go.

Harvard shot 70.4 percent from the floor during the second half and 62.3 percent for the game, a far cry from its shooting trouble against the Northeastern Huskies on Thursday, when the Crimson hit at only a 39.3 percent clip. The difference?

“Home! Home!” Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said.

Harvard was supposed to play its home opener last Saturday against Lafayette, but the nor’easter stalled the Leopards before they even got to Lavietes, leaving the Crimson game-less for over a week until its disappointing 63-59 loss on the Huskies’ Solomon Court.

“I don’t remember a start like this, as tough a non-conference start, and not being home,” Delaney-Smith said. “We just love our rims. They’re soft. We love them.”

Harvard boasted four double-digit scorers, as senior point guard Bev Moore registered 10 points and sophomore guard Laura Robinson notched a career-high 14. Moore and Peljto both went 3-of-4 from behind the arc, leading the team to 55-percent three-point shooting.

“We are a really talented shooting team,” Delaney-Smith said. “We should have performances like this often. I’m not surprised by this performance, believe it or not—we’re that good.”

The Crimson never trailed, taking the lead for good on Moore’s three from the left side to open the scoring just 10 seconds into the game. But Harvard could not put the game out of BU’s reach because of turnovers and a lack of early production from two of the Crimson’s top scorers, Cserny and Tubridy.

Harvard turned the ball over 14 times in the first half, and the Terriers capitalized on the mistakes. By game’s end, BU had scored 34 points on 22 Crimson turnovers.

“It was a combination of both their strong defense and our inability for a while to take care of the ball,” Peljto said. “It’s something we’ve been working on and we still have to improve on.”

The Crimson used halftime to regroup, with Cserny adjusting after scoring only two points in the first frame, in which she was limited to 10 minutes on the floor after picking up two early fouls.