"It was a great feeling everyone was so excited and it felt great knowing that all the hard work we've put in these past two weeks in practice has paid off," women's co-captain Faziah Steen '13 said. "Last time, Harvard had a lot of fast breaks and second chance points and this time we stopped those. It's great knowing that we can have a strategy and have everyone be on the same page and be able to execute it."
The Big Green came out with a vigorous start as Tia Dawson '15 won the opening tip, enabling Steen to go straight to the hold and set the pace for their offense, as the Big Green came out with a 7-1 lead with 15:48 on the clock.
Harvard fought back to tie the game, but a 9-0 run with a crucial three by co-captain Nicola Zimmer '14 put the Big Green up 17-10 with about seven minutes left in the first half. Dartmouth continued its offensive surge to enter the break at 26-17.
The Big Green kept up their impressive defense, forcing Harvard to commit 28 turnovers. Dartmouth capitalized on these errors and was able to score 31 points off of Crimson turnovers, as well as posting 11 steals as a team.
After building up a 13-point lead, Dartmouth faced a potential Harvard comeback in the last two minutes of the game, as the Crimson cut the lead down to six points.
"The feeling was just different," Lakin Roland '16 said. "There was a big crowd, we were all pumped up, and it was Harvard, so all of that piled up on top of each other just made it so much fun."
Steen and Zimmer led the Big Green's offense, with 13 and 18 points, respectively. After being sidelined with an injury, Zimmer tied her career high in points in her stellar return to the court.
"Nicola played great for us," Steen said. "She hit some clutch jump shots and it was nice having her back on the floor and handling the ball for us. It takes a lot of pressure off our young point guard."
Also standing out for the Big Green was Dawson, who proved to be a strong defensive force and led the team with seven rebounds. Last game, Dawson became the second member of the team along with Steen to reach the 300 rebounds mark this season. She currently has 312.
Overall, the game was nothing short of exciting. The Big Green came out of half time with a nine-point lead. Sparked by Steen's three-point play, Dartmouth went on a 10-0 run, giving the Big Green their largest lead during the game: 39-26.
"We played really great team defense," Zimmer said. "[Harvard] had a ton of turnovers and our posts did a great job helping out. A lot of our offense was jumpstarted by our defense, and my teammates did a great job of attacking and helping me get open."
Even though Dartmouth held the lead for 30 minutes of the game, Harvard would not back down, and continued to cut the Big Green's lead in the final minutes of action.
"Preparing for two weeks really made a difference," Roland said. "We've really come together as a team now."
This was Dartmouth's first game in two weeks after losing to the Crimson 88-66 on Jan. 12.
"We had a rough game against them the first time, and we knew we wanted to be more aggressive and stick it to them," Zimmer said. "We focused on getting back on defense and getting out on shooters and putting pressure on their inside game."
Dartmouth's 74.2 percent team free throw percentage also helped push the Big Green ahead as Harvard only shot 53.3 percent from the line.
Head coach Chris Weilgus is now just 10 wins away from reaching her career mark of 400 wins for the Big Green. Also notable for the Big Green, Steen is now just six points away from ranking 10th on Dartmouth's all-time scoring list with her current total of 1,131 points.
Dartmouth will begin their traditional Ivy League schedule as they travel to Brown University on Friday and Yale University on Saturday.
"Brown [(7-9, 1-1 Ivy League)] will be about being physical and keeping them from they want to do," Steen said. "We'll need to be able to close out on shooters to prevent them from getting open looks. Yale [(16-12, 8-6 Ivy League)] is a very physical team and we'll have to match their physicality it will be about our transition defense and shutting down key players."
