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Women's Basketball
at Boston University
1/30/2010 9:00:00 PM | Women's Basketball
HANOVER, N.H. - The Dartmouth women's basketball team dropped a 72-59 decision to Columbia tonight at Leede Arena for its first loss in Ivy play.
Dartmouth drops to 7-10 overall, 2-1 in Ivy play while Columbia improves to 12-6, 3-1 Ivy.
Brittney Smith (Fort Worth, Texas) tallied her third straight double-double with 18 points and 11 rebounds along with two steals and two blocks. She was joined in double figures by rookie Faziah Steen (Kalamazoo, Mich.) with 12 and her sister Margaret Smith (Fort Worth, Texas) with 10 points and six boards.
Columbia's Judie Lomax, a former Pac-10 player, tallied 26 points and 16 rebounds to lead her team. Dartmouth leads the all-time series against the Lions, 44-8.
Columbia employed a trapping press that resulted in 26 points off of 18 Dartmouth turnovers, but it was the Big Green's trademark defense that struggled mostly tonight. Dartmouth gave up 43.5 percent shooting to the Lions in an uncharacteristically weak defensive performance. Heading into tonight's game, the Big Green had given up an average of just 48.3 points per game.
Dartmouth did control the boards, 40-36, but shot just 36.5 percent itself and only 21.4 percent from three-point range. The Big Green outplayed the Lions in the second half, but it was a case of too little too late for Dartmouth.
Dartmouth was completely disjointed in the first half, and late foul trouble for Brittney Smith and Sasha Dosenko (Kiev, Ukraine) allowed Columbia's forwards, including Lomax, to get some critical late buckets.
The Big Green opened the game on a good swing, pounding it inside with Brittney Smith and Dosenko accounting for a 7-4 Dartmouth lead at 17:49. A Sara Yee three-ball pulled Columbia within one but Smith put the lead back to 9-6 on the next possession.
After Smith's first foul, Lomax went to work inside, spurring a backbreaking 11-0 Columbia run to build a 19-9 Lion lead at 10:10. Brittney Smith and Betsy Williams (Norwich, Vt.) stopped the bleeding with back-to-back buckets to make it 19-13 at 8:06. The energy was short-lived for Dartmouth, as Columbia opened up a 12-1 run spurred by Lauren Dwyer to go ahead 31-14 at 5:03.
Margaret Smith stopped the run with two free throws at 5:01, down 31-16, but the teams were an even 10-10 in the last five minutes. Steen hit a big three to make it 39-26 with 45 seconds to play and Dartmouth turned Columbia over on its next possession. The Big Green had a chance to cut it to as little as 10 on its next trip, but turned the ball right back over for a fastbreak Lomax layup. The result was a 41-26 halftime lead for Columbia, which would ultimately prove too much to overcome.
Dartmouth came out stronger in the second half, and ultimately outscored Columbia by two, but the Lions had an answer each time the Big Green lit a spark.
Columbia opened the half on a 4-0 run, but a three-point play by Steen followed by a nice take by Williams made it 45-31 at 16:57. The Lions roared right back and back-to-back threes made it a 53-33 lead, the largest of the game at 14:31. Margaret and Brittney Smith combined to get the lead back down to 52-38 at 12:52, but Columbia went on a 10-4 run capped by another Shafer three to get it back up to 20 at 9:14, 62-42.
Dartmouth responded with a 7-0 run capped by a Meghan McFee (Manchester, Conn.) three to slice the lead to a manageable 62-49 at 6:50. Yet once again the Lions got a wide-open look from three to build the lead right back to 16 two possessions later, 65-49.
The Big Green still had another run in it scoring five unanswered points including three from Smith to make it 67-56 at 1:24. Dartmouth fouled Columbia down the stretch and the Lions built their score from that point. Steen did hit one last three with 22 seconds to play but Columbia had the game in hand, 72-59.
Dartmouth will regroup this week before heading on its first Ivy road trip at Penn on Friday, Feb. 5 and Princeton on Saturday Feb. 6.