The Dartmouth men's basketball team endured a tough road trip this weekend against two Ivy opponents. On Friday night, the Big Green lost to Yale 69-64 in New Haven, Conn., in a game in which the Big Green led by as much as ten points. On Saturday, the Big Green turned in its second-worst shooting performance of the season in a 53-33 loss to Brown in Providence, R.I.
The disappointing road trip began with a trip to New Haven to play a Bulldog team that had already beaten Dartmouth (8-15, 3-7 Ivy) 71-64 at Leede Arena earlier this season.
In the first meeting, Yale (11-11, 7-2 Ivy) sprinted out to an early lead, and Dartmouth came back in the second half only to come up short. At this weekend's game, the roles were somewhat reversed.
An early 7-0 Big Green streak capped by a Jason Meyer '06 three-pointer gave the Big Green an 18-10 lead. In the first half, the lead would grow to as much as ten points for the Big Green. A three-pointer near the end of the half by Yale's Eric Falto would cut the Dartmouth lead to 38-31 going into halftime.
The second half started off slowly, as neither team scored for the first three and a half minutes until Dartmouth's Elgin Fitzgerald '10 put in an inside basket.
The teams would trade baskets until the 10-and-a-half minute mark when Yale went on a 10-4 run which tied the game at 53 with six minutes still to play. Still, neither team could gain an advantage, and with two minutes to play, DeVon Mosley '09 made a pair of free throws to put the Big Green up by a single point.
The game would turn on a steal by Yale's Nick Holmes from Dartmouth's Leon Pattman '07. This led to a traditional three-point play for the Bulldogs' Eric Falto, who buried the jumper and the free throw to give Yale the two-point edge. Four additional free throws by Yale's Ross Morin sealed the Big Green's defeat.
Falto had a game-high 21 points for the Bulldogs, while Pattman led the Big Green with 15. Both Pattman and Falto are near the top of the Ivy League in points per game, with Pattman in third, averaging 16.0 points, and Falto in sixth, with a 15.5 per-game average.
Alex Barnett '09, with 13 points, and Mosley, with 12 points, also reached double figures for the Big Green.
Meyer chalked up the tight game against Yale to the two teams' comparable systems.
"Yale plays a similar style of game when compared to us," he said. "They run the ball and play up-tempo. Brown plays a lot of zone and slows the game down."Saturday night held another rematch from earlier in the season. Dartmouth beat Brown (9-16, 4-6 Ivy) 56-52 at Leede Arena earlier this season in a thriller. This time around, the Big Green didn't have as much luck.
The Big Green actually led by five in a slow, low-scoring affair with five minutes left in the first half, but the Bears would throttle Dartmouth in the late part of the half and go into the locker room riding a 13-0 run and leading 24-16.
"We had too many unforced errors against their zone defense, and they capitalized on them," Meyer said.
The rest of the game would not get much better for the Big Green, as the Bears slowly pulled away and Dartmouth never was able to mount a comeback.
Mark McAndrew and Damon Huffman paced the Bears with 14 and 13 points, respectively. Mosley was the only Dartmouth player who reached double figures, with 10 points. McAndrew and Huffman are both in the top 10 in the Ivy League in points per game.
Saturday night was Dartmouth's second worst shooting display of the season, and its worst in Ivy League competition.
The Big Green scored only 33 points and shot 26 percent for the game, including a zero-for-12 mark from three-point range.
"I don't know what to equate our bad shooting to," Meyer said. "The night before [at Yale], we shot pretty well. I guess it just wasn't our night."
The only game in which the Big Green scored fewer points and had a lower field goal percentage was at No. 9 Kansas, in which Dartmouth put up 32 points and made only 25 percent of its shots.
The losses sealed the fate of the Big Green, which is tied for last place with Princeton and Harvard in the seven losses in the Ivy League and has no realistic chance of earning an NCAA tournament bid.
The Big Green has a two-game home stand next weekend when it will play host to Princeton on Friday, Feb. 23 and the Ivy League-leading University of Pennsylvania on Saturday, Feb. 24. Game times are scheduled for 7 p.m. and will be broadcast on WDCR 1340 AM.
