Women's Basketball Drops Conference Opener

With below-freezing temperatures outside of Lavietes Pavilion, the Harvard women’s basketball team couldn’t get its shooting to heat up indoors.

Having dropped two straight contests, the Crimson (6-8, 0-1 Ivy) took on Dartmouth (10-5, 1-0) Saturday night to open up Ancient Eight play. The Big Green, bolstered by a 13-2 second-half run, opened up a double-digit lead early after the break that Harvard couldn’t overcome. The home Crimson ended up dropping the first of its two showdowns with Dartmouth, 76-61.

“We know that Dartmouth is traditionally hard to play against,” junior guard Kit Metoyer said. “The Ivy League is a 14-game tournament, and there’s not a lot of breathing room to begin with. We know that we came out and we didn’t perform the way we wanted to, but we have to turn around and go right back to work on Monday.”

Tied at 29 with a minute to play in the first half, Big Green forward Lakin Roland knocked down a three-pointer to give the visitors the advantage heading into the break. The Crimson would never take the lead again.

Guard Fanni Szabo, who has averaged 18.2 points per game this season, opened up the second half with a 5-0 run of her own. Another trey by guard Milica Toskovic less than five minutes into the half extended Dartmouth’s lead to 11. The Big Green led by as much as 13 points before late free throws created a more lopsided score.

“I think it was the entire game, they wanted the ball more,” co-captain Erin McDonnell said. “They won the 50-50s, rebounds, some loose balls. They had more mental discipline than we did. It wasn’t that they did anything to us; it was kind of that we beat ourselves, and we just had too many mental breakdowns on defense.”

Dartmouth, which has hit 29.9 percent of its shots from beyond the arc this season, knocked down 60 percent of threes against Harvard, as well as 40.6 percent from the field in the second half. Meanwhile, the Crimson started the half just one-for-six from the field and struggled to generate offense.

“Basketball’s a beautiful game because it’s a game of runs,” Metoyer said. “If you get a few bounces to go your way, a lot can change, and I think Dartmouth stepped up and hit quite a few of those shots.”

Junior forward AnnMarie Healy and McDonnell led Harvard’s offense on the night, scoring 20 and 19 points, respectively. Healy put up seven of the Crimson’s first nine points and accounted for all of the home team’s points in the first seven minutes after halftime. The junior also notched a double-double with 11 boards and tied her career-high in points.

The Big Green exhibited a balanced attack throughout the night, with four players scoring in double-digits. Roland led Dartmouth with 25 points.

“We’ve got a very competitive spirit, but I think if you were to ask most people on the team, we weren’t as prepared as we should have been,” Metoyer said. “So much of the game is mental, and I think that’s something we’re going to be focusing on in the next 13 games is not only being ready for the scout and being ready for each team, but also stepping in between the lines and being ready.”

—Staff writer Samantha Lin can be reached at samantha.lin@thecrimson.com.