“[Metoyer is] an incredible shooter,” Delaney-Smith said. “Kit can score like that. Kit hasn’t been playing the kind of defense I want, until tonight. She did exactly what we’ve been trying to get her to do defensively with few breakdowns...if we can get Kit playing the kind of defense we want, we will get that kind of scoring from her.”

Joining Metoyer, Evans, and Gordon in making major contributions to Saturday night’s victory was sophomore forward AnnMarie Healy, who entered late in the first half for Erin McDonnell and finished a perfect 5-5 from the field, including a trey from the wing. Healy finished with 11 points and nine rebounds.

“Our mentality is, get in there and do the little stuff,” said Healy of the Crimson’s reserves. “Basketball is a game of fundamentals, and no one is out there to make the big play. Everyone is out there to run the court in transition, have lockdown [defense], rebound, and put back the rebounds.”

CONTROLLING THE PAINT

Even in the first four minutes of Saturday's game, when a motivated Dartmouth squad was rebounding well and taking advantage of second-chance opportunities, the Crimson forced the Big Green into perimeter jump shots. Early on, Dartmouth’s senior point guard Nicola Zimmer looked like the best player on the floor, creating offense through passing and making difficult isolation jumpers. But eventually, the perimeter shots stopped falling, making the Big Green a team that could not score.

Players said that the Crimson’s dominance in the paint was the product of two weeks of practices since Harvard last faced Dartmouth and won in a close contest, 73-63, in Hanover.

“We didn’t play well the first time we played them, to be honest.” Delaney-Smith said. Friday night’s game plan, she added, amounted to “stop the damn drive...we wanted to take the paint away.”

Helping the Crimson to do just that was a tremendous, team-wide rebounding performance. The Crimson grabbed 45 rebounds on Saturday night to Dartmouth’s 26. With 19 offensive rebounds, moreover, Harvard won itself a slew of extra possessions, allowing the team to balloon its lead in the second half.

“We watched a bunch of game film from that first one, because it was a closer game,” senior guard Christine Clark said. “We wanted to control their post-player’s drive, because that really hurt us in the first game, and so our focus was...really playing team defense against them.”

—Staff writer Matthew Q. Clarida can be reached at matthew.clarida@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattClarida