A big second-half run fell just short for the Harvard women’s basketball team Saturday night at Lavietes Pavilion, as the Crimson started its Ivy League title defense with a tough 52-47 loss to rival Dartmouth.

Despite the comeback effort, Harvard’s poor first-half display, in which it shot just 8-for-29 and turned the ball over 14 times, spelled its first league loss in nearly a year.

“We’re a much better team than we showed tonight,” junior forward Katie Rollins said.

Last year, a struggling Harvard squad traveled to Hanover, N.H., and defeated the then-defending Ivy League champions in overtime after facing a 16-point deficit. And this year, the Crimson found itself down by the same margin towards the end of the first half.

Following a dismal first 20 minutes, Harvard (7-8, 0-1 Ivy) rallied and briefly took the lead—its first since 2-0—with just over six minutes to go before falling behind again, 47-43, after a huge three-pointer from Big Green senior Kristen Craft. But the Crimson answered back with two straight baskets from Rollins to tie the score at 47 with 1:29 remaining.

On its next possession, Dartmouth (3-9, 1-0 Ivy) got the ball to the hot-shooting Craft. She missed her jumper, but senior forward Sydney Scott grabbed the offensive board and made a layup to put the Big Green up by two with just under a minute left in the game.

On the ensuing Harvard possession, Dartmouth junior Koren Schram stole the ball and raced down the court. Her layup rimmed out, but any hope of a Crimson comeback was put to bed when Big Green forward Brittany Smith followed with the putback.

In the end, it was the two offensive rebounds—two of the 11 surrendered by Harvard in the second half—that won the game for Dartmouth.

“They put those athletic forwards under the basket and they don’t do anything but rebound,” coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said.

Co-captain Lindsay Hallion hit a jumper off the opening tip to start the scoring. The Big Green answered right back with a three-pointer from Craft and did not look back. Other than committing an unusual amount of traveling violations, Dartmouth ran its offense very efficiently, shooting 48 percent from the field in a dominant first half.

The Crimson, on the other hand, shot just 28 percent and never got into any sort of offensive rhythm as it faced pressure from a stingy Big Green defense.

Any time Harvard threatened to make a run, either Craft or Schram would answer with a big three. The Crimson finished the first half with just 17 points and trailed by 12 heading into the break.

“They were hitting shots, and we weren’t,” junior guard Emily Tay said. “We didn’t step up when we needed to.”

When Harvard finally did get some momentum, it was by looking inside to Rollins, the team’s best player on the night. Rollins, who scored 16 of her game-high 18 points in the second half, refused to let Dartmouth pull away, making big basket after big basket down the stretch.

“They knew we were going in to her and she still found a way to make it happen,” Delaney-Smith said of Rollins.

On a night when Hallion and junior Niki Finelli shot a combined 2-for-15, it was Rollins’ strong post presence and the athletic play of Tay that helped the Crimson start the second half with a 22-9 run to take a 39-38 lead. Tay finished the game with 10 points and five steals.

“We realized that we weren’t playing our kind of game in the first half, that we were letting them take control,” said Rollins. “We didn’t get too down on ourselves. It was all confidence. It was a mental game from there.”

The team has a three-week layoff before traveling to Dartmouth on Jan. 26 to try to avenge Saturday’s loss.

“We’re not going to let them take the championship away from us so easily,” Rollins said.

—Staff writer Jay M. Cohen can be reached at jaycohen@fas.harvard.edu.