Dartmouth Drops Overtime Heartbreaker to Yale, 70-66

Saturday, February 13

Hanover, N.H.

7:00 PM

Dartmouth College

YALE

Dartmouth Drops Overtime Heartbreaker to Yale, 70-66

2/13/2010 10:00:00 PM | Women's Basketball

By: Dartmouth

Boxscore

HANOVER, N.H. - Junior Brittney Smith (Fort Worth, Texas) scored her 1000^th career point and sent the game to overtime, but Yale had just a bit more in the second OT period to steal a win over Dartmouth tonight.

Dartmouth (9-12, 4-3 Ivy) trailed Yale (10-11, 5-3 Ivy) by as many as 10 points in the second half but battled back in the last six minutes to tie the game. Smith took over in the final 2:33 of regulation, single-handedly bringing the Big Green back from down 54-50. She went on a 7-3 run against Yale, including a layup at 1:18 for her 1000^th career point and the game-tying jumper with 36 seconds to play.

Smith became the 15th player in program history to reach the 1,000-point mark and was the seventh-fastest to do so. She also reached the 700-rebound milestone for her career. Smith finished with a team-high 19 points and 13 rebounds and was joined in double figures by Faziah Steen (Kalamazoo, Mich.) and Betsy Williams (Norwich, Vt.) with 13 each. Dartmouth shot just 33 percent for the game and a dismal 15.4 percent in overtime, while Yale was not much sharper at 34. 7 percent for the game. The Big Green narrowly outrebounded the Bulldogs, 50-48.

Dartmouth participated in its annual WBCA Pink Zone breast cancer awareness game during the contest, teaming up with the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at its own Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center to present the event. More than 1,500 women's basketball teams participated in the event nationwide.

Dartmouth scored the first points of overtime with two free throws from Margaret Smith (Fort Worth, Texas), who finished with 11 rebounds and nine points, and extended the lead to 60-57 with another freebie from Smith at 2:17. The Big Green kept the Elis off the board until a Yoyo Greenfield layup at 1:56 made it 60-59. Missed free throws would prove to doom the Big Green as Brittney Smith hit one of two at the line on the next possession and Yale's Megan Vasquez ultimately tied it with five seconds left, 61-61, to force double overtime.

The Big Green opened the second overtime on a great note, winning the tip and Steen drove for a layup and the lead. Yale answered right back to tie it with a Mady Gobrecht lay-in on the next trip down the court. Neither team scored again for more than two minutes when Sasha Dosenko (Kiev, Ukraine) made a nice move in the paint to go up 65-63 at 2:09.

Yale scored on its next two possessions to take a 67-65 lead with 47 seconds to play and Dartmouth could not match the scores. The Big Green fouled Yale's Melissa Colborne, who hit just one of two, leaving it a possession game, and despite an offensive rebound after a Steen missed three, Dartmouth could not get more than one point at the line from Williams out of it. Yale's Allie Messimer hit two free throws with eight seconds to play to ice the 70-66 win.

After committing 13 turnovers and shooting just 24.1 percent from the floor, the Big Green was fortunate to escape the first half trailing by just six. Yale led by as many as 10 points twice during the half, during which the teams combined for 18 fouls.

It was slow going offensively in the opening minutes and Yale led just 6-3 when Meghan McFee (Manchester, Conn.) drained a three to tie the game at 13:33. The Bulldogs answered with a three of their own before Margaret Smith countered with a nice drive inside at 10:19.

Yale then rattled off an 8-0 run started by a three-point play from Megan Vasquez to go ahead 18-8 at 6:52. Dartmouth responded with a 6-0 run of its own, also started by a three-point play from Brittney Smith to slice the lead to 18-14 at 4:21. The Bulldogs countered with an 8-2 run to reinflate their advantage to 26-16 with just 1:37 to play.

The Big Green got two big stops and scores in the final minute capped by a coast-to-coast drive by Louise Vanden Bosch (Kettering, Ohio) to make it 28-22 at the break.

Yale opened the second half with five unanswered points that swelled the lead to 33-24 at 18:40 after a Messimer three. Dartmouth battled back and eventually cut the lead to just five at 13:22 after Steen drove and was fouled. She was injured on the play, one of many hard fouls by Yale, and Williams hit the free throw to convert the three-point play, making it 38-33 at 13:22.

The momentum was short-lived, however, as a Megan Vasquez three made the Yale lead 43-33 at 10:39, but Williams answered with one of her own on the next possession. Dartmouth slowly chipped away at the lead, but traded buckets with Yale until Margaret Smith hit two at the line to make it 45-38 at 9:14.

Dartmouth finally got close after Brittney Smith and Steen led Dartmouth on a 10-4 run capped by a Dosenko layup that took the score to just 52-50 Yale with 3:28 to go. Yale pulled back ahead by five with 2:06 to play before Smith took over in the final two minutes, forcing overtime.

The Big Green is on the road for its next two weekends, starting at Columbia and Cornell next Friday, Feb. 20 at Columbia at 7 p.m.