Amid the throng of students who packed Lavietes Pavilion for last night’s showdown with Dartmouth, a large sign proclaimed “Gimme Some Mo.”

The Harvard women’s basketball team also needed some Mo, and junior forward Maureen McCaffery—the Mo in question—gave them just that.

“Maureen did a great job,” Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said. “She was phenomenal tonight for us.”

McCaffery rallied her team with 16 points on 4-of-8 shooting from behind the arc, grabbed eight boards, and had three blocks in the 70-67 Harvard victory.

The win, the Crimson’s eighth in a row, gave Harvard a share of the Ivy League title and set up a playoff game with Dartmouth to be held at Brown on Saturday. The winner will represent the Ivy League in the NCAA tournament.

McCaffery’s effort off the bench epitomized her contribution during the Crimson’s eight-game tear, during which she has averaged almost nine points a game and scored in double figures four times.

“Once she starts [shooting], she can’t miss,” senior captain Reka Cserny said. “Maybe the other teams don’t know it yet, but we all know.”

Dartmouth certainly knows about McCaffery now. After a poor-shooting first half—McCaffery was just 1-of-6 from the field with three points—she poured in 13 points during Harvard’s critical second-half run.

“Maureen is that kind of a player,” Delaney-Smith said. “But she has such enormous...confidence that she rushes. She was rushing in the first half—she knew she had the wide open shots. We knew that if Maureen would take her time, she would be awesome.”

Delaney-Smith knew something. And if she volunteered any halftime suggestions, then McCaffery surely must have taken them to heart.

The Big Green stormed out of the locker room with a 9-4 run, taking a 34-26 lead thanks, in part, two turnaround jumpers by center Elise Morrison.

“We were down and Kathy put me in,” McCaffery said. “[She] was telling everybody to go in there and look to shoot, [saying] we have nothing to lose now. ‘Everybody’s a shooter.’ So I just launched.”

McCaffery’s three with 15:53 left—just the second Harvard field goal of the half—pulled the Crimson within five at 34-29. And when the Dartmouth lead swelled to 47-33 on two free throws by guard Fatima Kamara, McCaffery again bailed out the struggling Crimson offense with a big three-pointer.

“She’s usually our go-to when we need a couple of threes,” Cserny said. “And she had a lot of confidence today.”

Perhaps the most thrilling three-pointer McCaffery attempted, nonetheless, was the one she missed with Harvard staring at a 51-36 deficit with 10:24 to go in the second half.