Penn Spoils Senior Night with Win over Women's Hoops

Saturday, March 6

Hanover, N.H.

7:00 PM

Dartmouth College

Penn

Penn Spoils Senior Night with Win over Women's Hoops

3/6/2010 9:00:00 PM | Women's Basketball

By: Dartmouth

Boxscore

HANOVER, N.H. - The Dartmouth women's basketball team turned in a woeful shooting performance en route to a 44-31 loss to Penn this evening in the final home game of the season.

It was senior night for the Big Green and Dartmouth (11-16, 6-7 Ivy) honored its three seniors, Michelle Meyer (Covington, Ohio), Margaret Smith (Dallas, Texas) and Betsy Williams (Norwich, Vt.) prior to their final home game at Leede Arena.

A 10 minute scoring drought in the second half doomed the Big Green as did 23.3 percent shooting for the night. The Quakers (2-25, 1-12 Ivy) hit 42.5 percent of their shots and despite a size disadvantage, controlled the boards, 33-28.

Dartmouth had no double-digit scorer but was led by Williams' eight points and six points and nine rebounds from Brittney Smith (Fort Worth, Texas). Penn had a trio of double-digit scorers with 12 each from Jess Knapp and Amy Donovan.

Dartmouth was not sharp in the first half, and defensive miscues allowed Penn to shot 41.7 percent from the floor en route to a 24-18 halftime lead.

The Teams traded the first couple of scores before Penn jumped out to an 11-4 lead at 13:52. The Big Green erased most of the deficit with a 7-2 run to cut it to 13-11 at 10:11. Penn answered back with a three at 8:33 to reinflate the score to 16-11 at 8:33.

Both offenses stagnated before Sasha Dosenko (Kiev, Ukraine) scored four straight to make it 16-15 at 5:39. The Big Green's sluggish defense doomed it again, however, and Penn hit back-to-back threes around a Jalea Moses (Brookly, N.Y.) jumper to make it 24-17 at 1:43. Brittney Smith hit one of two at the line for the 24-18 halftime score.

A smaller Penn team outbattled Dartmouth on the boards, 19-10 in the first half.

Dartmouth scored the first bucket of the second half on a Faziah Steen (Kalamazoo, Mich.) jumper, giving life to Leede Arena and cutting the lead to 24-20. The energy was short-lived, however, as Penn went on an improbable 14-0 run, started and ended by three pointers from Donovan and Caitlin Slover, to go up 38-20 at 10:49.

Williams finally stopped the bleeding and a nine-minute drought with a threeball at 10:49 to make it 38-23. Penn got two points right back before Louise Vanden Bosch (Kettering, Ohio) hit two at the line and Dosenko scored inside to give the Green life, down 40-28 at 7:15. Penn's Sarah Bucar made short work of that with a threeball on the next possession, however.

Margaret Smith scored the Green's last field goal of the half at 5:07 and a frantic barrage of three-point attempts all went unanswered in the final two minutes for Dartmouth, as Penn held its ground to take the win.

The Big Green improved on the boards in the second, holding an 18-14 advantage, but shot only 17.4 percent in the half. Dartmouth was just 2-of-20 from three point range in the game.

Dartmouth has a tight turnaround before heading to Cambridge to take on Harvard this Tuesday night at 7 p.m.