With Mitola leading the charge, the Big Green was successful with its long range shooting against Yale (11-16, 5-5 Ivy), recording 19 field goals and matching a season high of 11 three pointers. Tyler Melville '14 was the only other Big Green player to score in double figures with 11 points on the day.
Mitola began his three-point rampage early, scoring a quick nine points with a trio of triples to give the Big Green an 11-4 lead before Yale went on a 10-1 run to overtake Dartmouth's lead. Mitola answered with another triple, but it was not enough to make a dent in another nine point run by the Bulldogs.
"We were working offensively on pushing the tempo a little more and running our offense a little quicker," Mitola said. "We did that in the first half of the Yale game, but if we're going to win we have to do it consistently."
Melville put a stop to the run with a three-pointer and with the help of two more treys by Mitola, Dartmouth was back on top by one point. Dartmouth had just nine field goals in the opening half, but seven were three-pointers. Yale's Armani Cotton scored on a putback in the last minutes of the half and then hit a three-pointer from the corner to reclaim Yale's lead 28-26 at the end of the period.
"We kept trying to hit Alex [Mitola] because he had a career night and we wanted to keep him going," Melville said. "We wanted to keep executing but we didn't have anything on our attack."
After getting off to a slow start in the second half, Yale quickly took control of the game with an 11-2 run. The Bulldogs saw its first double digit lead of the night at 39-28, but Malik Gill '16 and Mitola popped in layups to bring the difference back to seven.
Yale also began to find its shot, breaking a streak of cold shooting with back-to-back threes to take its biggest lead of the night at 18 points, 57-39.
"We just couldn't get our offense going," Gabas Maldunas '15 said. "We were just hanging around and couldn't figure out what each person's role was."
The Big Green refused to give up and with the help of three-pointers from Mitola and John Golden '15, scored 12 of the next 16 points to reign in Yale's lead to ten. In the last few minutes, however, the teams traded shots and the Yale bested the Big Green, 78-67.
On Saturday, Dartmouth faced a much improved Brown team and was unable to recover when the Bears opened up a double-digit lead in the first four minutes of play and did not let Dartmouth within five points the rest of the night.
"We dug ourselves in a hole from the start and they came out firing," Mitola said. "We were battling the rest of the game to get back in it."
Brown took charge of the game from the outset, scoring on all of its first five field-goal attempts to take a 12-2 lead. After a slow start, Dartmouth managed to start trading baskets with the Bears, but with nine minutes gone the team was still behind 20-8.
Gill hit the first three-pointer of the night for the Big Green, but the Bears soon extended its lead to a game-high 16 points. Melville, the lone Dartmouth player to score in double-digits with 14 points, responded with a three pointer and Mitola scored on a break to pull the deficit back to 11. The Big Green closed the half by hitting the final six points of the period with a pair of layups and two free throws by Melville.
"It didn't start well, but in the second half we didn't let them get away with an easy win," Maldunas said. "We got the game back within five points by fighting back."
In the second half Brown continued to dominate but Dartmouth fought back to within five points on two occasions. First, Gill drove for a layup and Mitola hit another three to make it a 35-30 game. The next time Dartmouth looked down low to the post, finding Connor Boehm '16 and Maldunas for layups to bring the deficit back to five. Brown responded each time Dartmouth drew close, however, countering each Dartmouth attack with five points of its own.
"For the rest of the season, our goal is to finish strong," Melville said. "Since the Ivy League doesn't have a conference tournament we're probably not going to have a postseason, but for now we're going to play for pride and to build off what we can for this year."
Dartmouth is on the road again next weekend against the University of Pennsylvania on Friday before facing Princeton University on Saturday.
"The last weeks of the season we want to put ourselves in a good position for next year," Mitola said. "When we get to practice we're going to have a lot of stuff to work on."
