Amidst the bevy of loose balls, broken offensive plays, and missed free throws on Friday night, the Harvard women’s basketball team snuck out of its own Laivetes Pavilion with a much-needed—if never certain—win over Yale.

But when senior guard Laura Robinson stepped to the free throw line with the Crimson clinging to a two-point lead, the Harvard bench sat back and added its first tally to the Ivy win column.

“She’s ice,” said Harvard Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith. “She prides herself on being ice. We expect that [from her], actually.”

Robinson nailed 7-of-8 free throws in the game’s final five minutes to give the Crimson a 55-48 win over the Bulldogs, who entered the game 0-7 on the road this season.

The Crimson showed every bit of the rustiness that has been characteristic of teams after the exams, compiling 20 turnovers and missing 11 free throws in a back-and-forth battle with Yale for any shred of offensive continuity.

“I thought [the game] was ugly, awful,” Delaney-Smith said. “But Laura, I thought, carried us. She has shown a lot of senior leadership and poise and she decided that she was just going to carry us and not let us lose.”

Robinson, who finished with a game-high 16 points, was held scoreless for the first 15 minutes of the second half, as the Crimson hit just 6-of-22 field goals and went more than five minutes without a point to start the latter frame. Yale, however, was just as cold, shooting 30 percent in the second half and coughing up 24 turnovers on the night.

The Crimson built an eight-point lead on five quick points from guard Lindsay Hallion and another layup from freshman forward Katie Rollins. Up 42-34 with under 10 minutes left, Harvard seemed poised to coast to its first Ivy win over a Yale team that could muster no offensive firepower all night. Then Yale poured in 12 points to Harvard’s six over the next seven minutes. When Chinenye Okafor’s free throw trickled into the net at 2:17, the Crimson saw its lead cut to a basket at 48-46.

“I hope exam rust is out now,” Delaney-Smith said. “There was no game rhythm out there. We just looked out of sync tonight.”

Neither team could establish any sort of offensive rhythm, but it was Harvard that made the most mistakes in the early parts of the second half. The Crimson turned the ball over 10 times in the second half and missed seven crucial free throws, mustering just two field goals in the first ten minutes of the latter frame.

Then Robinson took over, slicing through the Yale defense and getting to the free throw line—the only place Harvard found any offense after halftime. Despite the seven misses, 13 of the Crimson’s second-half points came from the charity stripe. Robinson netted 10-of-12 free throws on the night and added a nifty, off-balance jumper with 0:57 left to give Harvard a four-point cushion at 52-48.

“At that point in the game, you’ve just got to hit your shots,” Robinson said. “I want the ball down the stretch and I’m confident, and I think my teammates are confident in me as well.”

After the jumper, Robinson nailed one more free throw to put Harvard up five, and her assist to Christiana Lackner’s layup with 14 ticks remaining put the game out of reach for the visiting Bulldogs. Hallion added 12 points for the Crimson, while Okafor led Yale with 10 points.

—Staff writer Aidan E. Tait can be reached at atait@fas.harvard.edu.