Dartmouth Starts Four Game Ivy Homestand with Columbia & Cornell

Dartmouth Complete Game Notes (PDF)

The Dartmouth omen's basketball team starts the second go around of Ivy play this weekend, hosting Columbia and Cornell. The Big Green is participating in the WBCA's Pink Zone breast cancer awareness initiative on Friday. There are a variety of promotions in place including $1 admission for fans wearing PINK and free commemorative t-shirts for the first 200 fans!

Fans who received piggy banks at a game earlier this season are reminded to bring the change they collected back to be donated to the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.

On the court the Big Green has some work to do to get to .500 in Ivy play after going 1-6 in the first go around. Wracked with injuries, Dartmouth has been down to just nine healthy players for the last two weeks including missing starters Brittney Smith and Nicola Zimmer. This weekend, the Big Green hosts Columbia and Cornell looking to avenge road losses to both of those teams on the first Ivy weekend of the season.

GAME 22: DARTMOUTH (5-16, 1-6 Ivy) vs. COLUMBIA (5-17, 4-4 Ivy)
Date: Friday, Feb. 18 • 7 PM
Location: Leede Arena • Hanover, N.H.
Dartmouth-Columbia Series: Dartmouth leads, 44-10
Streak: Columbia +3
Last Meeting: Columbia W, 67-61, 1/29/11, New York
Of Note: Despite holding a commanding lead in the all-time series against Columbia, Dartmouth has faltered of late, losing three straight. Columbia swept Dartmouth last season for just the second time ever.

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GAME 23: DARTMOUTH (5-16, 1-6 Ivy) vs. COLUMBIA (5-17, 2-6 Ivy)
Date: Friday, Feb. 18 • 7 PM
Location: Leede Arena • Hanover, N.H.
Dartmouth-Cornel Series: Dartmouth leads, 52-12
Streak: Cornell +1
Last Meeting: Cornell W, 66-55, 1/28/11, Ithaca
Of Note: The Big Red won the first meeting of this season after taking both from Cornell last year. The Big Green is 16-4 against the Red since the 2002 season. Cornell was the lone Ivy to beat Dartmouth in 2008-09.

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STARTING FIVE
1. This weekend's games are numbers 929 & 930 in the 39th season of varsity women's basketball at Dartmouth.

2. The road woes continued for Dartmouth last weekend when the Big Green was swept, dropping to just 1-11 away from home this season. With a 4-3 record at Leede Arena, Dartmouth will look to capitalize on some home cooking starting a four-game homestand this weekend.

3. Tough shooting was the main source of the Big Green's two losses last weekend, shooting just 30.1 percent from the floor, including only a 27.3 percent effort at Brown. At Yale, Dartmouth shot 48 percent in the second half for a vast improvement over 21.2 percent in the first.

4. For the second straight weekend, the Big Green connected on better than 70 percent of its free throw attempts, including hitting 10-of-12 at Yale.

5. Coach Wielgus utilized her eighth different starting lineup at Yale, giving Eve Zelinger '14 her first career start. She became the ninth different player to start a game this year.

ENTERING THE PINK ZONE
During the game against Columbia on Friday night, Dartmouth will be celebrating the WBCA's Pink Zone initiative, a global, unified effort to raise breast cancer awareness. Dartmouth is once again partnering with the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center to raise awareness and support both survivors and caregivers in our own community.
The WBCA began the WBCA Pink Zone, formerly known as “Think Pink”, in 2007 as an initiative to raise breast cancer awareness in women's basketball, on campuses and in communities. Kay Yow, former North Carolina State University head women's basketball coach, served as the catalyst for the initiative after her third reoccurrence of breast cancer in 2006.
After 120 schools participated in 2007, the initiative reached 1,800 programs in 2010. Overall, the WBCA Pink Zone has raised nearly $3.3 million, has reached almost 2.7 million fans, and has unified over 4,700 participants in only four years.

A DOUBLY RARE SWEEP
Dartmouth was swept on the Brown-Yale weekend on Feb. 11-12, making for a few dubious distinctions for this year's team. First, Brown stopped a nine-game losing streak against the Big Green. The Bears had not won a game against Dartmouth since the 2005-06 season when the two teams shared the Ivy title with Princeton and each lost to each other once. Dartmouth had the last laugh that year with an Ivy playoff win and NCAA bid.
Dartmouth lost to both Brown and Yale in the same weekend for the first time since the 1992-93 season. Additionally, Brown and Yale both beat Harvard, marking just the second time ever that both the Big Green and Crimson were swept by Brown and Yale. The last time? The very first Ivy round-robin season in 1983-84.

ABOUT THAT STARTING LINEUP
Coach Wielgus debuted her eighth different starting lineup of the season at Yale, with Louise Vanden Bosch returning to the top-five and rookie Eve Zelinger making her first collegiate start. Much of the fluctuation in lineups has not been by choice as Dartmouth has yet to have all 13 of its players dressed in uniform for the same game this season. The Big Green is currently down to nine healthy players and has lost two starters this season.

PUT ME IN COACH
Freshman Eve Zelinger was more than ready to play when she earned her first career start at Yale on Feb. 12. After a solid 14 minutes at Brown the night before, Coach Wielgus gave Zelinger the nod and she responded with seven points, six rebounds, four assists and two steals in 34 minutes of play — all career highs. Prior to playing 14 minutes at Brown, Zelinger's season high was just seven minutes and she had not scored her first career points until Feb. 5 against Princeton.

FAZIAH'S ON FIRE
Sophomore Faziah Steen has scored in double-figures in 12 of the last 14 games and the last five straight. Averaging 17.7 points per game in conference play, Steen is the Ivy League's leading scorer thanks in part to back-to-back 28-point efforts against Columbia on Jan. 29 and Penn on Feb. 4. She also leads the league with 3.0 three-pointers made per Ivy game and is first in steals in the overall statistics with 2.2 per game. Against Penn, Steen went 7-of-11 from downtown, putting her just one triple shy of tying the school single-game record.

HOLDING ONTO THE BALL
Dartmouth turned the ball over a season-low 10 times at Brown on Feb. 11 but was unable to capitalize on its possessions in a 56-48 loss.

DOUBLE YOUR FUN
Senior Cassie Cooper has never been one to care about her own stats, but had to crack a smile when she earned a 10-point, 10-rebound double-double at Yale on Feb. 12, her third of the season. The mark has always been somewhat elusive for Cooper, who has been within two points or rebounds of a double-double three times including back-to-back games earlier this month.

BUT WE DON'T NEED THE DOUBLE-DOUBLE
The Big Green's victory over Penn marked the first time this season that the team has won a game without a double-double (1-10). It was also the first time Dartmouth has won without a double-digit rebounder (1-9).

SENIOR SURVIVAL
While Steen did work against Penn, seniors Cassie Cooper and Meghan McFee played like the veterans they are to get the win. McFee scored a season-high 17 points and dished out five assists, also going 7-of-8 at the free throw line including four straight in the final minute to ice the 68-65 win. Cooper scored the last seven points before that, including putting the team ahead for good, 64-63, with a three-point play after a breakaway layup — thanks to a long inbound pass from McFee, assist number five.

BIT BY THE INJURY BUG
Dartmouth has struggled with injuries throughout this season and is yet to dress all 13 players for a game. The Big Green was down to a season-low nine players at Brown and Yale on Feb. 11-12. Only five players have seen action in all 21 games, with Cassie Cooper and Faziah Steen as the only two that have started every contest.

YOU GOTTA HAVE THE BALL TO SCORE THE BALL
The Big Green didn't give itself much of a chance to score in a 67-61 loss at Columbia on Jan. 29. Dartmouth turned the ball over a pitiful 28 times, allowing its offense to only take 44 shots, while Columbia took 61 attempts from the field plus 36 free throws.

... AND TAKING THAT NEXT LEVEL
A look at the boxscore and some simple math shows that the Big Green could have easily won the game. Dartmouth also shot a solid 45.5 percent from the floor (Columbia shot just 32.8 percent). If the Big Green had given itself just eight more possessions (20 turnovers) and scored two-point baskets on 45.5 percent of those, it would have resulted in +7.28 more points, enough for a one-point win. Factor in the potential for three-pointers and the margin of victory could have been even higher.
If Dartmouth had been even more disciplined and cut the turnovers in half to 14 — Columbia had 15 — it could have resulted in a minimum of 12.74 more points.

D is FOR DEFLECTION
As a team, Dartmouth has shown a lot of hustle this season, already amassing 663 deflections. Last season the team had 740 for the season. The Big Green's team season-high of 47 was recorded against both Bryant (Nov. 28) and Rhode Island (Jan. 4), both overtime games. Faziah Steen leads the team with 141, followed by shot-swatter Sasha Dosenko with 99 and Cassie Cooper with 94.
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.

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