Junior Emma Markley recorded her sixth double-double of the season, scoring 11 points and bringing down 11 rebounds. Although Markley’s efforts spurred a late-game comeback, it wasn’t enough for Harvard, as Dartmouth took the Ivy opener, 45-44, on the strength of two last-second free throws.
The Crimson women’s basketball team seemed to be five seconds and one pass away from shifting the Ivy League power dynamic.
Instead, Dartmouth’s Margaret Smith intercepted Harvard freshman Victoria Lippert’s pass.
“It was a terrible pass, a huge mistake,” Lippert said. “I’m not going to let it happen again.”
The Crimson (9-5, 0-1 Ivy) quickly fouled Smith, who had yet to score a basket in the game. But the senior found her shot at the right time, hitting two free throws to give the Big Green (5-9, 1-0 Ivy) a 45-44 victory on its home court Saturday night.
Down by 11 in the second half, Harvard rallied to make it an even game, and junior Jackie Alemany hit a lay-up to put the Crimson up by one with 50 seconds remaining in regulation.
“There were moments when we had sparks,” Lippert said. “We definitely had our chances.”
But the loss sends Harvard back to the drawing board, where the team will have to patch up the same hole that cost it in last year’s games against the Big Green—rebounding.
“We’ve got to become a better rebounding team,” Crimson coach Kathy Delaney-Smith said.
Dartmouth’s 42-32 edge on the boards was especially costly given that Harvard was struggling with its shooting—something that is usually a strength for the Crimson.
“We were getting really, really good shots, and they were not falling,” Delaney-Smith said.
The game against the defending Ivy champions was Harvard’s first on the conference slate, and the sharp increase in pressure combined with the tenacity of the Big Green’s play may have gotten into the Crimson’s heads—and fingers.
“We let them rattle us a little too much,” Lippert said. “We’re going to have to maintain our composure. Sometimes, shots just fall down. We’ve got to be able to compensate with crashing the boards, getting a stop.”
Harvard saw more success in the second of these, as it held Brittney Smith, the reigning Ivy League Player of the Year, to six points, and the Smith sisters to a combined total of eight. But the Big Green found offense from other sources, namely Sasha Dosenko and Faziah Steen, who combined for 21 points. A Steen layup early in the second half gave Dartmouth an imposing 11-point lead.
But the Crimson’s experienced veterans turned things around from there.
Juniors Emma Markley and Jackie Alemany started the rally for Harvard, as Alemany assisted her classmate on a layup that brought the margin back within single digits.
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