Seniors, Steen Lead Dartmouth Past Penn, 68-65

Friday, February 4

Hanover, N.H.

7:00 PM

Dartmouth College

Penn

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Seniors, Steen Lead Dartmouth Past Penn, 68-65

2/4/2011 9:49:00 PM | Women's Basketball

By: Dartmouth

BOXSCORE

HANOVER, N.H. - Sophomore Faziah Steen (Kalamazoo, Mich.) scored a career-high 28 points for the second straight game to lead a trio of double-digit scorers as the Dartmouth women's basketball team topped Penn, 68-65.

The victory was the first Ivy win of the season for Dartmouth (5-13, 1-3 Ivy) which dressed only nine players to take on a much improved Penn squad (7-11, 1-3 Ivy).

Dartmouth coughed up an eight-point lead in the second half, but hit key free throws down the stretch to ice the win in a hotly contested battle. The Big Green shot 38.6 percent compared to Penn's 46.3 percent, but connected on 42 percent of its three-point attempts. Each team turned it over just 13 times.

Steen got 21 of her 28 points from downtown, connecting on seven three-pointers, just one shy of the Dartmouth record. She also added three assists and two steals. Senior guard Meghan McFee (Manchester, Conn.) was the difference maker for Dartmouth, however, filling the statsheet with 17 points, five assists and five rebounds. Classmate Cassie Cooper (Chelsea, Maine) scored a career-high 15 points for the third time, and added nine rebounds.

Freshman Alyssa Baron led Penn with 19 points and five assists while Jourdan Banks had 10 points off the bench.

Cooper and McFee combined for Dartmouth's last 11 points of the game, including Cooper hitting three game-tying layups and the decisive three-point play after a long pass from McFee. McFee went 4-of-4 at the line to seal the win.

Steen set the tone for the rest of her night with a three-pointer for the game's first basket, but Penn responded with an 11-0 run to take an 11-3 lead at 13:36. Coach Wielgus let her team play through it, however, and it paid off with a 9-1 run that cut the lead to 13-12 after a McFee triple at 10:52.

Penn's Meghan McCullough hit a three on the next possession to put her team up, 16-12, but Dartmouth answered right back with a 7-0 run capped by a Steen three to go up 19-16 at 8:13. The teams traded buckets before a threeball from Kelsey Byrd (Saratoga, Calif.) and an offensive putback by Cooper put the Green up 26-20 with 4:34 to play.

The Quakers answered back, however, and went on a 9-2 run to take a 29-28 lead after a Jerin Smith jumper at 1:09. McFee gave the crowd a preview of her late-game heroics, however, hitting two free throws with two seconds to play for a 30-29 halftime edge.

Steen went to work early in the second half, hitting three three-pointes in the first three minutes of the period to give Dartmouth a 43-35 lead, its largest of the game, at 16:56. A Penn timeout resulted in some well-executed adjustments, however, as the Quakers rattled off seven unanswered points to slice the lead to 43-42 at 14:23.

Dartmouth did just enough to keep the Quakers at bay for a couple more minutes, but Baron gave Penn a 46-45 lead at 12:41. Steen responded with five unanswered points though to give a four-point lead right back to Dartmouth, extending that to 52-46 with 10:25 on the clock.

The Quakers chipped away and a Baron threeball put the visitors ahead by one, 55-54 with 8:16 on the clock. Penn maintained that lead or a tie for nearly seven minutes, up 63-61 after a Banks putback. Cooper had been responsible for the two previous ties, however, scoring in the paint on consecutive possessions.

After a Penn shot clock violation, McFee threw a long pass to Cooper at the free throw line. The senior got the fast break and coolly hit a free throw after being fouled by Penn's Jess Knapp, to put Dartmouth up for good, 64-63 with 1:49 to play.

Dartmouth gave up one more bucket to Baron, uncontested, after and before two sets of made free throws by McFee. The senior put Dartmouth up for good, 68-65, with two seconds left in the game and the Big Green tipped the inbound pass for the win.

Dartmouth is back in action tomorrow night when it hosts defending Ivy champ Princeton at 7 p.m. The Tigers took their first Ivy loss in the last two seasons tonight, falling at Harvard, 73-67.