Women's Basketball Downs Harvard, 59-55, in Ivy Opener

Saturday, January 10

Cambridge, Mass.

2:00 PM

Dartmouth College

Harvard

Dartmouth's Brittney Smith Named Ivy Player of the Week

Women's Basketball Downs Harvard, 59-55, in Ivy Opener

1/10/2009 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball

By: Dartmouth

Boxscore

Cambridge, Mass. ? The 64^th meeting between the Dartmouth and Harvard women's basketball teams was yet another classic but the Big Green emerged victorious, 59-55, to begin its Ivy League title defense.

Both teams shared the Ivy championship last season with Cornell and Dartmouth which has won the last two meetings between the Ivy rivals, defeated Harvard in the first round of the Ivy playoff last spring. The Crimson leads the all-time series, 35-29.

Dartmouth (4-9, 1-0 Ivy) benefitted from a total team effort in the win and its defense proved the difference maker. Sophomore forward Brittney Smith (Fort Worth, Texas) was dynamic, posting 18 points, 11 rebounds, three steals and two assists while senior guard Koren Schram (Batesville, Ark.) tallied 17 points and seven rebounds ? 15 in the second half. Freshman

Brogan Berry poured in 20 points for Harvard (8-7, 0-1 Ivy) while Emily Tay added eight. Harvard's starting post players Katie Rollins and Emma Markley were held well below their season averages with just eight and two points, respectively.

After defense ruled the day for both sides in the first half, Harvard led, 20-19, but Dartmouth stormed through the second, shooting 46.2 percent from the floor to build a 12-point lead with 6:36 on the clock As the teams duked it out during the closing minutes, it was often a battle of wills between Dartmouth's senior guard Schram and Harvard's senior Tay, both first team All-Ivy performers. Just as Tay pulled her team within three, Schram answered with a gutsy jumper in the lane to give Dartmouth a 54-47 lead with 1:24, setting up the dramatic finish. The teams would combined to take 19 free-throws during the final 1:04 of the game, but Dartmouth went just 5-of-14 from the line, allowing Harvard to stay in the contest.

Harvard rookie Berry hit two free throws with 25 seconds left to pull the Crimson within three, down 58-55, setting up the dramatic finish. After Dartmouth missed a pair of free throws on the next possession, Harvard's Niki Finelli spotted up from three but missed short and Darcy Rose (Fort Collins, Colo.) came up with the rebound. Dartmouth missed yet another set of free throws before Schram made a heads up defensive play, tipping a pass by Tay that Rose scooped up. She hit one of two from the line with less than a second left to ice the 59-55 win.

The first half was a battle ? only not one to which most Ivy women's basketball fans would expect from Dartmouth and Harvard. The game's first field goal was not scored until 3:22 into the game when Dartmouth junior Margaret Smith (Fort Worth, Texas) nailed a jumper at 16:38. Dartmouth built a modest 4-0 lead when Darcy Rose (Fort Collins, Colo.) scored a minute later and Harvard did not light up the scoreboard until 14:07.

The teams traded buckets but Brittney Smith scored Dartmouth's next five to make it an improbable 9-9 game with 7:07 remaining in the first. Tay rallied for five unanswered points for Harvard to go up, 14-9 at 4:48. Dartmouth sophomore Meghan McFee (Manchester, Conn.) hit a three in her first collegiate start followed by a three-point play by classmate Cassie Cooper (Chelsea, Maine) to give the Green back a 15-14 lead. The Crimson hit back-to-back threes with a Schram fastbreak layup between and McFee nailed a floater at the buzzer to make it 20-19, Harvard, at the break.

Margaret Smith started the second as she did the first, with a nice jumper in the paint to get the Big Green back ahead. The squads battled before Claire Wheeler tied the game at 28-28 for Harvard at 15:17. Dartmouth then capitalized on the one-two punch of Smith scoring inside and Schram nailing a three to go up 33-28 at 13:45, a lead it would never relinquish.

The Crimson did pull within one of Dartmouth after two threes from Berry and Finelli, down 35-34, just over a minute later. On the next possession, a pair of Schram free throws started a 13-2 Dartmouth run to swell the lead to 48-36 at 6:36. The Big Green's defense held the normally potent Crimson without a field goal for more than six minutes, with both points coming from the free throw line.

Finelli and Rollins each scored to cut the Dartmouth lead to eight, but Smith answered with a layup off a feed from Rose at 4:54 to extend the Green's lead to 10 again. The squads traded buckets until Dartmouth led by seven to set up the dramatic final minutes.

The Big Green has a quick turnaround before it heads to instate rival UNH this Tuesday night for a 7 p.m. tip. Ivy play does not resume until Jan. 30 when Dartmouth heads to Princeton and Penn for its first back-to-back weekend.