Women's Basketball Hosts Princeton, Penn for Final Home Weekend

Complete Dartmouth Game Notes

The Dartmouth women's basketball team plays its final two home games of the 2009-10 season and honors its three seniors while hosting Princeton and Penn this Friday and Saturday.

GAMES 26 & 27: DARTMOUTH (11-14, 6-5 Ivy) vs. PRINCETON & PENN

GAME 26: DARTMOUTH (11-14, 6-5 Ivy) vs PRINCETON (23-2, 11-0 Ivy)
Date: Friday, March 5, 2010 • 7 PM
Location: Leede Arena • Hanover, N.H.
Dartmouth-Princeton Series: Dartmouth leads, 43-20
Last Meeting: 2/6/10 • Princeton, N.J.
Result: Princeton W, 58-47
Streak: Princeton +1
Princeton snapped a four-game losing streak against Dartmouth in a close contest earlier this season. The Big Green still commands recent meetings, winning 9 of the last 12.

GAME 27: DARTMOUTH (11-14, 6-5 Ivy) vs PENN (1-24, 0-11 Ivy)
Date: Saturday, March 6, 2010 • 7 PM
Location: Leede Arena • Hanover, N.H.
Dartmouth-Penn Series: Dartmouth leads, 21-21
Last Meeting: 2/5/10 • Philadelphia, Pa.
Result: Dartmouth W, 51-37
Streak: Dartmouth +5
Dartmouth has won 10 of the last 11 meetings, and five straight, with a 56-53 Penn win in 2007 the lone loss. Other than Harvard, Penn is the only Ivy team with 21+ wins against the Big Green.

MULTIMEDIA
Dartmouth Radio (WUVR 1490 AM) (Both Games)

Live Stats (Both Games) • Live Video ($) (Both Games)

THIS TIME OUT
Games Number 909 & 910. Dartmouth closes out the home portion of its schedule this weekend against the Ivy League's first and last place teams. The Big Green is back at Leede Arena after spending its last two Ivy weekends, and three out of the last four, on the road. With a two game lead over Harvard, Princeton is in position to clinch a share of the Ivy title with a win in either of its games this weekend. Dartmouth will look to clinch a winning record in conference play.

DARTMOUTH PROBABLE STARTERS
*#10    Margaret Smith   G • SR • 6-1 • 6.2 ppg, 5.7 rgg, 82.4 FT Pct.
*#20    Brittney Smith    F • JR • 6-1 • 12.4 ppg, 10.4 rpg, 1.9 bpg
#25    Faziah Steen      G • FR • 5-8 • 9.0 ppg, 2.6 rpg, 2.0 spg
#32    Betsy Williams   G • SR • 6-0 • 7.5 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 1.1 apg
#34    Sasha Dosenko   F • SO • 6-3 • 7.8 ppg, 5.9 rpg, 1.4 bpg
*Returning starter

SENIOR WEEKEND
Dartmouth will celebrate its three seniors this weekend, with the formal senior night ceremony coming before the Penn game on Saturday night. In their four years, Dartmouth's seniors, Michelle Meyer, Margaret Smith and Betsy Williams, have amassed 59 victories and 39 Ivy League victories. They've won two Ivy Championships, played in one NCAA Tournament and two Postseason WNIT's.

OUT OF THE RUNNING
For the first time since the 2002-03 season, Dartmouth enters its final home weekend without an Ivy Championship or postseason bid left to fight for. In fact, the 2006-07 season, when Dartmouth secured a WNIT bid on senior night, was the only season in that stretch, until now, that the Ivy title was out of reach.

DOMINANCE OVER THE BEARS
Dartmouth turned in a dominant defensive effort in its 51-29 win at Brown on Feb. 27. The effort included holding Brown to 19.4 percent shooting for the game and just 10.7 percent shooting in the first half, in which the Bears scored just eight points. The last time the Big Green held an opponent under 30 points was also against Brown, a 58-27 victory last season (Feb. 6, 2009). Dartmouth bettered its halftime effort this year, up 35-8, after holding a 25-10 lead at the break last season.

SALVAGING SPLITS
Dartmouth has not been swept during any Ivy weekend this season, but the Big Green has also not turned in a 2-0 performance yet, getting a split in five previous weekends. This weekend, an usual pairing against opponents standing 11-0, Princeton, and 0-11, Penn, will be Dartmouth's last chance for a weekend sweep.

UNDER 50 IS A WIN
The Big Green is 6-0 this season when holding its opponent to 50 points or less. Dartmouth is also 3-0 keeping teams below 40 points, which has happened twice in Ivy play, holding Penn to 37 points and Brown to 29. Last season, the Big Green held four opponents under 40 points and 11 under 50.

D IS FOR DEFLECTION
As a team, Dartmouth has amassed 683 deflections this season. A deflection is an imperfect hustle stat, but is recorded whenever a Big Green player alters the path of the ball, including tipped passes, altered shots, steals or blocks. Dartmouth tallied a season-high 39 deflections at Yale, playing hard despite the loss. Brittney Smith had 12 in that game and leads the team with 164 while Faziah Steen ranks second with 125 and Margaret Smith third with 109.

FIRST TO 300
With its victory at Cornell on Feb. 20, 2010, Dartmouth became the first Ivy League women's basketball program to reach 300 conference wins. The Big Green is 301-126 all-time against Ivy opponents. Dartmouth beat Ivy rival Harvard to the mark by just seven games (Harvard has 295).

IVY LEAGUE ELITE
Dartmouth has won 17 of a possible 33 Ivy League Championships since 1976-77. The Big Green owns at least a share of four of the last five Ivy Championships including the last two, with an outright title last season in 2009. Dartmouth leads its all-time series against every Ivy team except Harvard, who holds a 35-31 edge. Only one other Ivy team, Penn, has more than 20 wins against the Green with 21.

LEADING THE LEAGUE AT THE LINE
As evidenced by her performance at Cornell, Ivy opponents would do best to keep senior Margaret Smith off the free throw line. In conference play, she leads the league in free throw percentage at 90.2 percent, converting on 37-of-41attempts. She ranks second in the overall rankings at 82.4 percent. Though she and younger sister Brittney Smith bear a striking resemblance to one another, Margaret has the leg up on the 2009 Player of the Year Brittney at the line. The younger Smith shoots just 61.1 percent at the line.

OVERTIME'S NOT OUR TIME THIS YEAR
In program history, Dartmouth has only played to overtime 15 times against Ivy opponents, with four of those coming in the last two seasons. This season, on Feb. 13, the Big Green played just its third ever double-overtime Ivy game, a 70-66 loss to Yale. It was the first double-overtime Ivy game since a March 2, 1996 win over Brown (61-52) and Dartmouth's first double-overtime loss. Last weekend, on Feb. 19, Dartmouth played its second straight overtime game, losing 66-59 at Columbia. It marked just the third time in program history that Dartmouth has played consecutive overtime games. Last season (2008-09), Dartmouth played a program-record four overtime games, including back-to-back contests against Michigan State (one OT) and Vermont (three OT).

BRITTNEY HITS 1,000
Junior forward Brittney Smith became the 15th player in program history to reach the 1,000-point mark during the Feb. 13, 2010 game against Yale. Smith did so during a flurry in which she single-handedly tied the game by scoring seven points in less than three minutes. Of the 15 players to reach the milestone, Smith did so the seventh-fastest, taking just 81 games. Smith is the fourth player since 2005 to reach the mark, the eighth to do so prior to her senior year and just the first post player since Katharine Hanks '03 did so in 2001.

NOT THE ONLY MILESTONE
Smith also reached the 700-rebound plateau against Yale, making her just the sixth player in program history to have recorded 1,000 points and 700 rebounds. She has also passed 125 career assists, 125 career steals and is just six blocks away from 125.

IN THE CLASSROOM AND ON THE COURT
Senior guard Betsy Williams has earned a spot on the CoSIDA Academic All-District I second team. Williams was chosen based on her prowess both in the classroom and on the basketball court. For women's basketball, 10 student-athletes were voted to the two all-district teams out of a pool of nearly 40 nominees. A psychology major with a French minor, Williams maintains an impressive 3.71 grade point average and studied abroad in France during the spring of her sophomore year.

Schedules