Desperately needing a win to keep alive a legitimate shot at making the Ivy League tournament, freshman Micaela Cyr and the Harvard women’s lacrosse team fell to seventh-ranked Dartmouth 11-9 yesterday.

A lot has changed for the Harvard women’s lacrosse team since it was soundly defeated earlier this month by No. 5 Virginia, 14-9. But in just two short weeks, the young Crimson started to come together, and, with a win over Princeton last week, put itself back in the playoff picture.

Harvard’s growth was on full display yesterday afternoon at Harvard Stadium when the young team took its latest top-10 opponent, No. 7 Dartmouth, to the wire.  But while the Crimson has come a long way, its efforts were not enough to pull off the upset.

Needing a win to keep alive a legitimate shot at making the four-team Ivy League tournament, Harvard (6-7, 2-4 Ivy) squandered an early two-goal lead, eventually falling, 11-9, to the Big Green (10-2, 5-1).

“I think it’s a disappointing loss because we were there with them,” said sophomore Melanie Baskind, who finished with two scores.” We’re doing things right, just not all the time. Overall, we hung with a top-10 team. We’re a completely different team than we were at the beginning of the season.”

After accumulating a 5-3 lead over the first 20 minutes of play, the home team allowed its opponent to go on a crippling 7-1 run that put the Crimson behind by four with just over 20 minutes left to play.

Harvard managed to claw its way back into the contest, rattling off three-straight scores to get within one with 7:30 left on the clock.

Freshman Jennifer VanderMeulen kept the momentum alive, winning control of the ball off the ensuing draw to give her team the possession and a chance to tie the game.

But two costly Crimson turnovers down the stretch allowed Dartmouth to get back in control of the contest.

“We’re all looking at that last possession as something we want back,” Baskind said. “We tried setting up a play and got pressured and ended up turning it over. It wasn’t too pretty.”

The Big Green capitalized on the turnover, as Hope McIntyre picked up a ground ball and sent the ball the other way. Hana Bowers gave Dartmouth an insurance-score with 2:40 left to put her team up 11-9.

The Big Green iced the match on the ensuing draw after the Big Green’s Hilary Smith pulled down possession of the ball, as Dartmouth managed to run off the contest’s final ticks and pick up its fifth conference victory.

“Overall, we did give it all that we had and gave Dartmouth a run for their money,” junior Sam McMahon said. “I don’t think we should hang our heads after [yesterday’s] game.”

The attempt at a comeback began when freshman Danielle Tetreault kickstarted the Harvard run, ending a 12-minute scoring drought with an unassisted score to cut her team’s deficit to two. VanderMeulen, the conference’s reigning Offensive Player of the Week, got in on the action minutes later, finishing a feed from Tetreault despite being face-guarded to put the score at 10-8.

After the Crimson offense worked the ball around quickly, Baskind finished an unassisted score to cut it to one.

“We came up with some big defensive stands,” McMahon said. “We let our attackers handle the ball and they put it away.”

But Harvard could not complete the comeback.

While the Crimson managed to make it a close contest at the end, things really got away from the home team midway through the contest.

After going up 5-3 courtesy of a goal from freshman Micaela Cyr with 10:34 left in the first half, things began to unravel.

Dartmouth’s Kristin Goldberg answered just moments later, sparking a 4-0 run for the Big Green over the next five minutes of play.

Cyr kept things from getting out of hand, scoring her second goal of the contest off a free position shot just 15 seconds before the break.

But the Dartmouth offense picked up right from where it left off, notching three straight scores in the opening 5:10 of the second frame to put the visitors ahead, 10-6.

Despite the late rally, the four-goal deficit was too much to overcome.

The loss drops Harvard into a tie with Brown for sixth place in the conference standings with one league contest remaining.

—Staff writer Martin Kessler can be reached at martin.kessler@college.harvard.edu.