Women's Basketball Picked to Finish Third in Ivy League

PRINCETON, N.J. - The 17-time Ivy League Champion Dartmouth women's basketball team has been picked to finish third in the Ancient Eight this season by a panel of league media and sports information directors.

Dartmouth, which has won four of the last six Ivy Championships, landed third in this year's preseason poll with 96 points. Defending champ Princeton was picked to repeat with 135 points and 16 first-place votes and Harvard landed in second with 115 points and one first-place vote.

Yale was predicted to finish fourth, followed by Columbia, Brown, Cornell and Penn. The poll featured 17 voters including a media member and sports information representative from each Ivy school and one national representative.

The Big Green, which has won more Ivy titles than any other program, is coming off one of its toughest seasons in 2009-10. Dartmouth's fifth-place finish was its lowest since the 1992-93 team took sixth in Jacquelline Hullah's last season at the helm. Last season's squad struggled to rebuild from the loss of two All-Ivy seniors from the 2009 championship team.

Entering her 26^th season and second stint at Dartmouth, head coach Chris Wielgus has seen her team finish lower than third just three times since 1994.

The 2010-11 Dartmouth women are ready to turn the page, however, as Brittney Smith (Fort Worth, Texas), 2009 Ivy Player of the year and two-time first team All-Ivy honoree, leads a reloaded and focused team. Smith has averaged 12.3 points and 8.7 rebounds per game for her career and averaged a double-double last season. Already having reached the 1,000-point mark, Smith is on her way to becoming just the third player in program history to record 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds.

Smith rules the frontcourt and welcomes back fellow senior co-captain Cassie Cooper (Chelsea, Maine) this winter. The 6-2 Cooper was poised for a big junior season but played in just two games before a season-ending injury. Junior Sasha Dosenko (Kiev, Ukraine), a versatile 6-3 post, stunned the league last season when she averaged 7.6 points and 6.0 rebounds after playing in just 20 games for 94 total minutes as a rookie.

Guards Meghan McFee (Manchester, Conn.) and Louise Vanden Bosch (Kettering, Ohio) round out the senior class and should make a significant impact. McFee started 17 games including all 14 Ivy contests for the 2009-10 league champs.

Also returning to the backcourt are four sophomore guards, led by Faziah Steen (Kalamazoo, Mich.) a talented shooting guard who was named to the Ivy All-Rookie team after scoring 9.4 points per game. Steen was the Big Green's primary ball-handler last winter and should benefit to a return to her natural position with the arrival of freshman point guard Nicola Zimmer (Chevy Chase, Md.). Zimmer is one of four talented freshmen who are expected to make an impact this season.

The Big Green has its work cut out for it in the early part of the season, opening the 2010-11 campaign at Big 10 for Northwestern on Nov. 12. After a trip to instate rival UNH on Nov. 16, Dartmouth heads to the Vermont tournament to face ACC foe Boston College and perennial MAAC Champion Marist, which has made the NCAA Tournament for the last five seasons.

The Big Green's home-opener is against Vermont on Wed., Nov. 24. Last season the #10 seed Catamounts upset #7 Wisconsin in the NCAA Tournament first round.

2010-11 Ivy League Women's Basketball Preseason Media Poll
Predicted Order of Finish
(First-Place Votes in Parentheses)

1. Princeton (16)   135
2. Harvard (1)       115
3. Dartmouth         96
4. Yale                   84
5. Columbia            73
6. Brown                50
7. Cornell               39
8. Penn                  19

Schedules