After a three-day rest for the holiday, the Harvard women’s basketball team looked sluggish against Holy Cross yesterday afternoon.

Nothing went right for the visiting Crimson (3-2) in the first half, a period in which the Crusaders (3-3) missed slightly under half their shots. Harvard had no chance in keeping up with Holy Cross, shooting a dismal 15.4 percent and getting outrebounded, 26-14. In the second half, the Crimson outscored the Crusaders, 37-30, but it was nowhere near sufficient to overcome the 26-point deficit from the first 20 minutes. Harvard dropped the contest, 72-53.

“We shot terribly,” co-captain Christine Matera said. “We didn’t execute well on offense. Some shots were rushed, and other shots that we normally hit we didn’t hit today. To go along with that, we didn’t rebound the ball well following our shots. Overall, it was a pretty poor performance.”

Though the Crimson played a much different game in the second half, the first half defined the outcome of the encounter. The Crusaders jumped out to a double-digit lead, 23-11, in the first 11 minutes of the game. Rookie Alex Smith was critical in setting the tempo for Holy Cross in that span, sinking three three-pointers, and Amy Lepley contributed four points as well. Another jumper by the Crusaders gave Holy Cross a 14-point lead with 8:45 left on the clock.

But Harvard was not ready to go down without a fight, and sophomore Jasmine Evans and freshman Christine Clark provided a transient offensive spark. Clark’s three-point play and a bucket off of Evans’ steal brought the score closer, 25-16, but that would mark the last time the Crimson scored in the half. The Crusaders’ defense, combined with poor shooting by Harvard, kept the Crimson from putting up any more points after 13 minutes of play.

Holy Cross scored 17 unanswered points, sending the Crimson to the locker room at halftime with a 42-16 score to think about.

“The starters need to take full responsibility for how we are starting games,” Matera said. “I don’t think we are starting games strongly at all. We just need to come ready to play...This is something that we can’t let become a trend. For the two losses, that’s what has been happening...and that’s not good enough.”

Harvard gave false hope of a comeback to start the second half, as Evans hit a three-point shot, but the Crusaders’ Alyssa May responded with one of her own from beyond the arc. The Crimson hit four of its first seven shots to start the period, but despite the team’s improved shooting effort, Holy Cross was able to keep up.

With 13 minutes left to play, the game’s leading scorer, Meredith Ward, had a three-point play that restored the deficit to 26. Ward finished the game with 17 points.

For the Crimson, Evans, Clark, and sophomore Victoria Lippert led the team with 12 points each. It marked Clark’s fourth straight double-digit scoring effort.

“I think that the team has a very good atmosphere to be around,” the rookie said about her recent success. “The team is very supportive of one another, and it makes it easy to play on this team, because everybody wants each teammate to succeed.”

The Crusaders’ Christine Ganser made a bucket to widen the gap to 56-28. Whitney Fremeau—second to Ward in points scored with 15—hit a shot, and the Crusaders followed it up with another score to further humble Harvard. With the deficit now at 32 points, the Crimson responded with a 13-6 run to set the score at 66-41.

With three minutes left to play, Harvard put together a 10-2 run to lessen the deficit. But Holy Cross finished the game with a strong defensive effort, never leading by fewer than 17 points.

The first-half lead provided the Crusaders with a needed cushion, as the Crimson stepped up its shooting in the second half, hitting 24 of 35 shots. Because of the poor start, Harvard still finished the game with a low overall field goal percentage of 26.2 compared to Holy Cross’s 50.9 percent.

“As a team, it was a terrible performance, and we need to come back and work hard tomorrow,” Matera said, “because today, [the team] definitely wasn’t nearly a good enough team to be in the ball game, let alone win it.”

—Staff writer Brian A. Campos can be reached at bcampos@fas.harvard.edu.