Dartmouth (5-10, 1-5 Ivy) made a habit of inconsistency this season. The Big Green showed flashes in which it was the better team in every game that it played. This held true even in blowout losses to No. 1 Cornell and No. 2 Duke and was especially evident in one-goal losses to No. 3 Virginia and No. 12 Albany. Over the course of its 15-game season, Dartmouth was not able to put together a complete four-quarter effort.
"I think [the team's inconsistency] is a function of being a young team with not a lot of upperclassmen," co-captain Nick Bonacci '07 said. "We had a total of something like seven upperclassmen who played throughout the season, and it takes at least a year to learn how to bring that sustained intensity for 60 minutes. It's something those guys are going to have to learn on their own."
Against Harvard (5-7, 3-3 Ivy), the Big Green had sustained lapses that allowed the Crimson to take a large lead in what was otherwise a back-and-forth game.
Harvard started strong, scoring its first goal 12 seconds into the game and amassing a 3-0 lead before Dartmouth was able to retaliate.
"They had two quick goals that we shouldn't have given up, two quick transition goals, but we were able to bounce back," Bonacci said.
Towny Swiggett '10 and Jimmy Mullen '09 scored back-to-back goals to cut the deficit to one goal at the end of the first quarter.
Defenses dominated the second quarter, with Harvard shutting out the Big Green attack, and Dartmouth's defense only giving up one goal to make the score 4-2 in favor of Harvard at halftime.
The teams traded goals to open the second half before Dartmouth ran into problems with clears and face-offs. The Big Green lost seven of 10 face-offs in the quarter and only cleared the ball to their offensive end on two of five defensive stops. As a result, Dartmouth played the third quarter on its heels while the Crimson went on the attack.
"In the second half, they started pushing the tempo," co-captain Ryan O'Connor '07 said. "They started winning face-offs and setting a pace that favored them more than us and eventually we couldn't keep up."
With 9:22 remaining in the third quarter, Harvard attachment Greg Cohen scored his first of three unanswered goals in two minutes. Over Cohen's scoring stretch, the tenable 5-3 margin became an insurmountable 8-3 deficit as the Crimson pulled away for good. Cohen would score another in the quarter and finished the game with six goals.
"They inverted a lot and [Cohen] scored a lot of his goals while getting feeds, and he only had to dodge a couple times," O'Connor said. "He dodged once when there was no slide. Mostly, he happened to be in the spots in their offense that we slid off of, and he was able to step in and hit his shots. It's not that he was doing anything spectacular."
Harvard outshot Dartmouth 14-6 en route to outscoring the Big Green 6-3 in the pivotal third quarter.
While the Big Green's 1-5 Ivy League record puts Dartmouth in a tie with Brown for last place in the league, the future looks brighter for the Big Green. Dartmouth's leading scorers in 2007 were both underclassmen, with Ari Sussman '10 finishing with 33 goals and Brian Koch '09 scoring 32 goals.
"Those guys both had break-out years, and I think it's a great sign for things to come," Bonacci said. "We're going to have a pretty well-balanced offense in the next couple of years."
Dartmouth will miss the NCAA tournament for the fourth consecutive year. The Big Green have not qualified for the NCAA tournament since the 2003 campaign, the last year under former head coach Rick Sowell.
