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.

Soon after, Alemany capitalized off of her own defensive rebound with a three-point shot.

Alemany and Markley would both finish the game with 11 boards.

Junior co-captain Christine Matera, sophomore Brogan Berry, and freshmen Lippert and Miriam Rutzen would join in on the action, allowing Harvard to even up the contest.

“[We’re strong] when we get our team chemistry,” Lippert said. “We need to jive together and communicate.”

It was fitting that the two juniors who started the rally, Alemany and Markley, capped it off for the Crimson. First, Markley hit a free-throw shot to bring Harvard within one. Less than a minute later, Alemany converted a layup that looked to be a game changer.

But the lead that the Crimson had worked all half to earn would last only 45 seconds. The Big Green used upperclassman leadership of its own to regain the lead with Margaret Smith’s foul shots.

The trip to the line temporarily secured Dartmouth’s position as top dog in the Ivy League, while Harvard turns its focus to the south as it travels to Tallahassee for a Thursday game against Florida State, ranked 12th in the nation.

“Florida State’s a great opportunity,” Delaney-Smith said. “It’s win-win. We should not feel a lot of pressure.”

The loss puts even more significance on the remaining Ivy games for a Crimson team hoping to win the league and qualify for the NCAA tournament. Meanwhile, Harvard will have almost two months to prepare for its rematch against the Big Green in the final game of the regular season.

“We’re going to come out with guns blazing when we play them again,” Lippert said. “We’re going to have a real fire under us.”

—Staff writer Christina C. McClintock can be reached at ccmcclin@fas.harvard.edu.