Season Comes to a Close with 69-59 Loss at Brown

Saturday, March 7

Providence, R.I.

7:00 p.m.

Dartmouth College

9-19, 7-7Ivy

Brown

9-19, 3-11Ivy

Dartmouth

Brown

Season Comes to a Close with 69-59 Loss at Brown

3/7/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball

Box Score

By: Dartmouth

Boxscore

PROVIDENCE, R.I. ? Senior Alex Barnett scored 19 points in his final collegiate game, but Dartmouth could not slow Brown on Saturday evening at Pizzitola Sports Center as the host Bears took a 69-59 victory on their Senior Night. Peter Sullivan led all scorers with 21 points for Brown (9-19, 3-11 Ivy), while the Big Green (9-19, 7-7 Ivy) finish the year with their best conference record in four years.

The Brown offense pounded the ball down low all evening, and it translated to a field goal percentage of 58.3 (28-of-48) for the game. Sullivan was 9-of-12 himself and a perfect 3-of-3 from the line to account for his 21 points. Just as vital to the Bear efforts were Matt Mullery and Chris Skrelja with 17 points apiece as they combined to hit 13-of-18.

While Barnett was 8-of-15 and Dan Biber (Lorain, Ohio) was 5-of-10 with four three-pointers for 15 points, the rest of the Big Green squad had problems putting the ball in the basket, hitting just 10-of-34 (.294) for a 39.0 team field goal percentage.

Barnett scored the first six Dartmouth points of the game, but picked up his second foul less than five minutes into the contest and sat the rest of the half. Despite his limited court time, Barnett still led Dartmouth in scoring at the break.

With the league's leading scorer on the bench, Brown opened up a lead as large as 11 points, thanks to 12 first-half points from Matt Mullery on 5-of-5 shooting and nine more from Peter Sullivan. The Bears shot 60 percent (15-of-25) in the opening stanza while holding the Big Green shooters to 37.5 percent (12-of-32). At the break, Datmouth trailed by eight, 37-29.

Consecutive buckets from Barnett early in the second half got the Big Green within five, but Sullivan responded with back-to-back layups of his own. Barnett drained a three-pointer, however, to cut the deficit back to six at 47-41 with 14:01 to play.

The Brown lead remained between six and 10 points for the next nine minutes when Barnett canned a pair of free throws to make the score 58-53 with 4:48 to play. But it was Sullivan who continued to be the pest, hitting two more field goals in the next 50 seconds. Dartmouth would not get closer than seven points the rest of the way.

The Bears only played seven players in the game, with four of them corraling six rebounds each as they held a 33-31 advantage on the glass. Each of the seven players had at least one assist as well, led by Skrelja with five.

Biber led the Big Green with six rebounds while senior center Kurt Graeber (Palos Verdes Estates, Calif.) handed out a career-high three assists to lead the squad, plus scored five points and grabbed four rebounds in the final game of his career as well.

Depending on the outcome of the Penn-Princeton game in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening, Dartmouth will either finish in a tie for third or fourth place in the Ivy League. Four years ago the Big Green finished with an identical 7-7 record in the conference to tie for third in head coach Terry Dunn's first season guiding the program.