Rebecca Sobel '11 scored her sixth goal of the season to avoid a shutout by the Tigers (5-1, 1-0 Ivy).
Dartmouth (1-4, 0-1 Ivy) walked onto the field with a particular game plan to deal with the Princeton powerhouse, but the team still started off slowly, Sobel said.
"It took us a while to get into our rhythm," she said.
Princeton, meanwhile, showed ferocity right from the opening whistle. Two Tigers sophomore Kathleen Sharkey and freshman Julia Reinprecht combined to score five of the team's six goals.
Reinprecht scored the first two goals of the game within ten minutes of the opening whistle. Her first tally was an individual effort in which she weaved through the Dartmouth defense in the circle before beating Dartmouth netminder Meagan Vakiener '12, and the second came when Reinprecht gathered the rebound from a blocked shot and put it away.
Sharkey added another goal the first of her eventual hat trick about a minute later, and by halftime, Dartmouth faced a five-goal deficit, which proved too steep to conquer.
Vakiener turned away 18 of Princeton's 24 shots in the losing effort.
"Our inability to capitalize on scoring opportunities in the first half took the wind out of our sails," Big Green head coach Amy Fowler said, adding that she thought the team's performance improved in the second half.
The Big Green defense effectively shut down the Princeton offense in the latter frame, holding the Tigers to just one goal on the half.
Sobel scored Dartmouth's lone goal of the contest just over six minutes into the second half, knocking the rebound of a Kelly Hood '12 shot past Princeton backup goalkeeper Cynthia Wray.
Wray, a senior, entered the game at the start of the second half to replace junior Jennifer King.
Sharkey netted her third goal of the game on a penalty shot from the top of the circle.
Sobel said the second half of the game was more representative of the team's true potential than was the first.
"I think if you looked at just the second half, when we held them to just one goal and scored one ourselves, you'd see that's the way we can play," she said.
The Dartmouth women looked to bounce back from the loss Sunday against Boston University
The Big Green kept up with the Terriers (5-5) for the majority of the game. The score remained tied at zero for most of the match, and it was not until the end of the second half that Boston sophomore Giovanni Monaco collected a rebound and put it past Vakiener.
Vakiener had a total of eight saves for the game.
Both teams had trouble falling into an offensive groove early in the contest, combining for nine shots on goal.
By the second half, however, Boston's offense gained some momentum as the Terriers outshot Dartmouth 10-1.
The Big Green totaled a mere four shots in the game. Two of those shots missed the goal entirely, and two were blocked by BU's Amanda Smith for the shutout.
"We didn't create enough chances for ourselves," Sobel said.
Dartmouth has an opportunity to bolster its record this coming weekend. On Saturday, the team will travel to Providence, R.I., for its second Ivy League game, and on Sunday, the women will face off against Bryant College in Hanover.
Last weekend, the team spent a lot of time focusing on its opponents, Sobel said. This weekend, she said, the women will look to focus more on playing their own game.
"It's our time to take control of the game," she said. "I think that we're capable of coming out with two wins this weekend."
