For the women's basketball team, everything that could have gone wrong during this weekend's road trip did go wrong.
First, icy weather pushed Friday night's game at Cornell University to Sunday night, disrupting the Big Green's travel plans.
The switch also meant that "we had to play the tougher team on the second night [of the road trip] rather than the first," Coach Chris Wielgus said.
Then, to top it all off, half of the team got sick between games.
When the problem-filled trip was finally over, the team was left with a two-game split, beating Columbia University 67-55 on Saturday, and falling to Cornell 71-62 on Sunday.
"This entire trip was disruptive," Wielgus said. "The situation [with the schedule] was taken completely out of our hands, but these things happen."
But the timing could not have been worse. With three games left in the season, Dartmouth (13-10 overall, 8-3 Ivy League) has fallen into second place, one game behind defending champion Brown University (15-8 overall, 9-2 Ivy). The Big Green must win their remaining three games against Yale University, Brown and Harvard University to have any shot at the Ivy League title.
"We still have an opportunity to win," Wielgus said. "We just have to play hard and we must get healthy."
Saturday night's game at Columbia was not one of the Big Green's better showings of the season, but it was enough to earn the win.
"We didn't play the greatest [game]," Sally Annis '97 said, "but we managed to pull out the win."
Dartmouth took a big lead early, but gradually let the Lions back into the game.
A shrewd decision by Wielgus to apply a full-court press at the end of the first half put the game out of reach.
Balanced scoring paced the Big Green. Annis led all scorers with 21 points, and Jen Pariseau '97 came off the bench to chip in 10. Betsy Gilmore '94, Brandi Jones '95, Kira Lawrence '96 and Ilsa Webeck '94 each added eight.
Gilmore also added seven assists and seven steals, including several down the stretch.
On Sunday night, the Big Green had more to worry about than just their game against the Big Red. Six players came down with a severe case of either the flu or food poisoning after the Columbia win. Annis, Jen Stamp '96, and Jessica Hill '97 didn't leave the team's hotel, while Lawrence and Pariseau bravely played through their illness.
"It was very disruptive to have them all sick at the same time," Wielgus said. "Instead of focusing on our game, we were focused more on getting our players to function normally."
The Big Red (8-16 overall, 5-7 Ivy), on the other hand, were ready to play and stepped their game up a notch against the ailing Big Green.
"Everyone is ready to play you when you're in first place," Lawrence said. "It's redemption for the bottom teams in the standings to beat the top ones."
The Big Red was on fire from the start, shooting a torrid 73 percent (eight for11) from beyond the three-point arc in the first half to open up a 39-31 halftime lead.
"Cornell put up more three's than I've ever seen," Wielgus said. "We had a hard time stopping them."
Dartmouth managed to keep the game close, but in the end could not overtake the sharp-shooting Big Red.
"We didn't convert when we had to," Wielgus said. "We cut their lead to four [in the second half], but then they went up by six and we had to start fouling. The game was closer than the score indicated."
