Completed Event: Men's Basketball at Penn on February 21, 2025 , Loss , 75, to, 88
Final
Men's Basketball
at Penn
75
88
Men Face Drake on Hardwood for First Time
12/20/2010 7:07:00 PM | Men's Basketball
The Game: Dartmouth (3-7) at Drake (4-5)
Location: Drake Knapp Center (7,002), Des Moines, Iowa
Tipoff: Tuesday, Dec. 21 at 8:05 p.m. (EST)
Series Record: First meeting
Live Video - www.godrakebulldogs.com ($)
Live Stats
Complete Game Notes
Bouncing Back vs. the Bulldogs
• Coming off a 71-42 loss at Iowa State, Dartmouth will attempt to win its first game within the borders of the Hawkeye State in 62 years at Drake on Tuesday night.
• The Big Green stuck with Iowa State in the first half, trailing by a single point at the break, 28-27. But the Cyclones dominated the second half of play, hitting 8-of-14 from long range while holding Dartmouth to four field goals.
• At three different points in the opening half, the Green held the lead over ISU as senior Ronnie Dixon scored seven points and dished out four assists.
• Freshman Gediminas Bertasius was named the Ivy League Rookie of the Week for his performance in two games last week — the rest of the league played a total of three games.
• Rebounding has been an issue all season as Dartmouth's opponents have hauled in eight more boards per game. The Cyclones finished the game Sunday with 14 more off the glass.
• The Big Green's leading rebounder is 6-4 wing David Rufful at 5.9 per game. He has led Dartmouth on the boards in seven of the 10 games.
• Junior Jabari Trotter is the only player on the team that has hit at least one field goal in every game thus far and leads the team at 10.3 points per game.
Series vs. Drake
• Dartmouth has never played the Bulldogs prior to this game. In fact, the Big Green have only played three games against teams from the entire state previously: losses to the Hawkeyes of Iowa in the 1987-88 and 1993-94 seasons, and Sunday's loss at Iowa State.
• This is just the sixth game Dartmouth will have played within the borders of the state — the three games listed above, and two games in the Corn Bowl on December 29-30, 1948, against Minnesota (64-52 loss) and Vanderbilt (64-52 win).
Scouting the Bulldogs
• Drake had a modest two-game win streak snapped at Iowa on Saturday, 59-52, after winning at Eastern Michigan and beating Boise State by close margins.
• The top two scorers this season for the Bulldogs — guards Rayvonte Rice (12.4 ppg) and Ryan Wedel (11.8) — led the way against Iowa with 14 points apiece. Wedel does most of his work behind the arc with a team-best 24 three-pointers at a 41.4 percent clip.
• Aside from Wedel, the rest of the team is shooting just 28.2 percent from downtown.
• In the post, Drake looks to Seth VanDeest who is shooting 58.1 percent from the floor and scoring 11.0 points per contest. He also leads the team with 5.4 rebounds a game, but the Bulldogs have had similar troubles on the boards as Dartmouth, yielding nearly eight more rebounds to their opponents.
• Defensively, Drake has defended well on the perimeter with a three-point percentage defense of 30.0, but opponents have fared much better in close at 45.6 percent overall (53.0 pct. on twos).
• Bulldogs head coach Mark Phelps is in his third year after serving 12 seasons as an assistant under Herb Sendek at N.C. State and Arizona State.
Ivy League Rookie of the Week
With just five games played by Ivy League teams during the week of Dec. 13-19, there weren't many opportunities for conference players to earn a weekly award. But freshman Gediminas Bertasius took advantage of the dearth of games to take home the rookie of the week award, averaging 3.0 points and 3.5 rebounds in Dartmouth's two games. He is the first Big Green player to earn the honor since Matt LaBove at this same time last year.
Tale of Two Halves
Things were looking good for Dartmouth at the end of the first half at Iowa State on Dec. 19. The Big Green trailed by a single point against the Big 12 opponent, essentially playing the Cyclones to a stalemate in just about every statistical category. The second half, however, was another story as ISU scored the first nine points and never looked back, yielding just four field goals. The 15 points in the half were the fewest in a half for the Green since scoring 13 last year against Cornell, and the four field goals were the fewest since making just three in a loss to Air Force two years ago.
Seven Points to Top the Team
The senior co-captains, Ronnie Dixon and Clive Weeden, led Dartmouth with seven points apiece in the loss to the Cyclones. Last year, the Big Green had just two games in which their top scorer did not reach double figures — R.J. Griffin had nine in a loss at Princeton and Josh Riddle had only six in a 71-37 defeat at Cornell.
Ivy League RPI
This matchup between Dartmouth and Drake features teams from conferences that are very close in the RPI rankings. The Missouri Valley Conference, which has been among the top 10 in RPI each of the past six seasons, is currently 13th. But the Ivy League is even better at 12th, and is making a run at besting its top RPI finish of 13 back in the 2001-02 season (first tracked in the 1993-94 season).
Players Mentioned
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