The split marked just the second time that Dartmouth (7-10, 2-1 Ivy) has lost to an Ivy opponent in the past year snapping the Big Green's six-game conference winning streak.
"We almost had two weeks off, and it looked like it," head coach Chris Wielgus said.
After the weekend action, the women's squad is now tied in third place in the league with Harvard University. With Dartmouth's loss, Princeton University is the only remaining undefeated team in the Ancient Eight.
The women's squad looked to build on its momentum after down-to-the-wire wins over rivals Harvard and the University of New Hampshire earlier in the month.
On Friday against Cornell (5-12, 0-4 Ivy), Dartmouth continued its trend of close finishes with two crucial defensive stops in the final minute of regulation to lock in the last-second victory.
"[The players] had enormous confidence," Wielgus explained. "I have a lot of confidence in the defense, and it was going to come down to defense."
This was the third straight game decided by two points or less for Dartmouth.
The Big Green took an early 8-4 lead in the first half behind threes from Faziah Steen-Ngalamulume '13 and Brittney Smith '11, but the Big Red countered with a series of long-range looks that quickly outpaced Dartmouth's offense with a 11-0 run.
Dartmouth's pressure defense was absent throughout the first period, as Big Green players struggled to guard Cornell's perimeter shooting, and allowed the visitors to sink 6-12 shots from beyond the arc before the intermission.
"I didn't think our guards were defending the ball screen properly," Wielgus said. "We did not play with the intensity we needed [in the first half]."
Trailing by the largest deficit of the game at 27-16 with less than four minutes to go, the Big Green managed to cut the advantage to single-digits at 33-25 by halftime.
Prior to Friday's game, Dartmouth had yet to post a victory this season when trailing at halftime.
The home team opened the second half with a game-changing 11-0 run in the first five minutes that included five turnovers and five fouls committed by the visitors.
"At halftime, we were down eight, and I think everyone was just fired up," Smith said. "We just came out and wanted to attack the basket, and it worked out well for us."
The Big Green tightened its zone coverage, not allowing a Cornell field goal for over seven minutes into the second half.
After building a seven point lead, Dartmouth was unable to put the game away, as the Big Red responded with back-to-back three-pointers that cut the Big Green advantage to one.
The rest of the half was back-and-forth, with neither team able to pull away by more than two points.
With approximately a minute left in regulation, two clutch free throws from Margaret Smith '10 gave Dartmouth a one-point lead that Cornell was unable to overcome.
"We definitely amped it up on the defensive end in the second half," Betsy Williams '10 said. "That really showed in the final seconds of the game."
Brittney Smith posted a game-high 22 points and a team-high 12 rebounds, while Williams added nine points and six boards.
On Saturday, the women's squad looked for its fifth win in six games against a tough Columbia (12-6, 3-1 Ivy) squad anchored by junior forward Judie Lomax, who leads the league in both scoring and rebounding.
A big first half by the Lions, however, proved too much to overcome as Dartmouth gave up almost 24 more points than its season average.
Despite opening the first half with a quick three-pointer, Dartmouth soon found itself deep in the hole, as two combined Columbia scoring runs established a 17 point Lions' lead with five minutes left before halftime.
The Lions built upon their lead in the second half with long range shots to complement their inside threat answering every Dartmouth run with more points of their own.
A last-minute desperation charge for the Big Green wasn't enough as Columbia ran away with the score, 72-59.
Lomax led all players in the game with 26 points and 16 rebounds. Before transferring to Columbia, Lomax played for Oregon State University in the 2006-2007 season, where she started in 28 games as a freshman, was named to the Pac-10 All-Freshman team and led the league in field-goal percentage.
Smith posted her third straight double-double with 18 points and 11 rebounds, while teammate Steen-Ngalamulume added 12 points.
Now in the heat of Ivy play, the women's squad will be back on the road this weekend to face off against the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University.
The Big Green went 4-0 in its matchups against Penn and Princeton last season. In the first game against Princeton, Dartmouth pulled off a 71-67 overtime win, connecting on 100 percent of its free throws in the extra session. Meghan McFee '11 contributed 21 points in the victory, including two three-pointers.
The Big Green's second look at Princeton last season was even closer a 43-42 home-court victory that saw the score tied six times.
Penn posed somewhat less of a challenge last year, with Dartmouth notching 56-39 and 55-36 wins. On Jan. 31, 2009, Brittney Smith scored 28 points at the Quakers' own court to give Wielgus her 200th Ivy League victory.
Dartmouth will hope to achieve the same results this weekend when they take on Penn at 7 p.m. on Friday in Philadelphia, Pa., and then Princeton at 6 p.m. on Saturday in Princeton, N.J.
