Dartmouth Women's Basketball Drops Battle With Iowa

Sunday, November 11

Iowa City, Iowa

3:00 PM

Dartmouth College

Iowa

Dartmouth Women's Basketball Drops Battle With Iowa

11/11/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball

By: Dartmouth

Boxscore

Iowa City, Iowa - The Dartmouth women's basketball team played a gritty game, but fell short in the season opener against the storied Big 10 program Iowa, losing 61-43.

Junior guard Koren Schram (Batesville, Ark.) had a monster game, with 19 points including five three-pointers and seven rebounds. Senior Sydney Scott (Houston, Texas) and sophomore Margaret Smith (Fort Worth, Texas) each had nine rebounds in an amazing effort as the Big Green outrebounded Iowa 40-37. The Hawkeyes starting lineup featured three players over 6-2.

The Big Green struck first when Scott nailed a jumper at 19:02. The teams battled back and forth before back-to-back threes from Schram and Kristen Craft (Marshalltown, Iowa) gave Dartmouth a 15-9 lead at the 13:00 mark.

Dartmouth's defense buckled down to hold Iowa scoreless for a three-minute stretch before Wendy Ausdemore hit the first of two-straight triples to end the drought. Her bucket started a 14-0 run to give the Hawkeyes a 23-15 lead until the Big Green broke a six-minute scoreless period with a Schram triple at 6:49 to make it 23-18, Iowa.

The Green battled back and the score was knotted up at 25-25 at the two-minute mark of the half before the Hawkeyes mounted a 7-0 run to take a 32-25 lead at halftime.

Iowa came out on fire in the second half, going on a 7-2 run to take a 39-27 lead by the first media timeout. Dartmouth regrouped during the break and got the ball to Schram who nailed two triples in less than a minute to pull Dartmouth within six, down 39-33 at 14:11. The Hawkeyes answered with four points in the paint before Schram cut it to eight, 43-35, with a nifty jumper following a hard-nosed play to get the ball and a timeout for the Big Green.

Dartmouth held Iowa scoreless for the next three minutes before Johanna Solverson hit back-to-back threes followed by a Krista VandeVenter bucket to put the Hawks up 51-35 at 8:54. Though Iowa seemed to have Dartmouth on the ropes, the Big Green would not back down and a Michelle Meyer (Covington, Ohio) triple and a steal gave her team new life.

The Big Green's defense helped keep things close down the stretch, but Iowa's size proved too great a challenge for the Dartmouth's post players.

The game was a homecoming for Craft, a senior co-captain, who played a full 40 minutes of gutsy basketball for her team in front of a sizeable Dartmouth fan-base. Craft added seven assists and two steals to her four boards. 10 different Dartmouth players saw action in the game, with Brittney Smith (Fort Worth, Texas) scoring her first collegiate points.

Dartmouth is now 0-1 on the young season while Iowa is 1-0.

The Big Green is back in action on Thursday when it heads to Orono, Maine for a 7:30 match-up with the Black Bears.