Halftime Lead Vanishes as Dartmouth Closes Out Season

Saturday, March 5

Hanover, N.H.

7:00 PM

Dartmouth College

5-23, 1-13Ivy

Penn

13-14, 7-6Ivy

Penn

Dartmouth

Halftime Lead Vanishes as Dartmouth Closes Out Season

3/5/2011 11:38:00 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score

By: Dartmouth

HANOVER, N.H. — For one half, it looked as if the Dartmouth Big Green men's basketball team would close out a difficult season with a victory on Senior Night to honor its two seniors, Ronnie Dixon and Clive Weeden. But the Penn Quakers caught fire from downtown in the second half while the Big Green lost their touch and were dealt a 70-58 defeat in front of 1,005 fans at Leede Arena on Saturday night.

Penn (13-14, 7-6 Ivy) got 21 points from Jack Eggleston, who knocked down each of this three-point attempts on the night and single-handedly kept the Quakers in the game during a dominant Dartmouth first half. As a team, Penn hit 8-of-12 from long range and 16-of-27 from the floor in the second half to erase a 13-point halftime deficit.

For Dartmouth (5-23, 1-13 Ivy), freshman Tyler Melville was one of three to score in double figures with a team-high 16 on 7-of-12 shooting while handing out five assists. After shooting 51.9 percent (14-of-27) from the floor in the opening stanza, the Big Green could only muster 30.4 percent (7-of-23) in the second half, with two of those seven field goals coming in the final 75 seconds when the game was well in hand.

Tyler Melville led the Big Green with 16 points.

Although the Quakers drew first blood on a short jumper in the lane by Eggleston, junior David Rufful immediately drained a three-pointer to give Dartmouth a lead it would hold for 31 minutes. The two sides traded buckets before the Green embarked on an 11-0 run on a trifecta from sophomore R.J. Griffin and four baskets in the paint for a 16-4 lead.

It would be five minutes before Big Green could score again, but Penn wasn't having much more success on offense with just one close-range field goal by Conor Turley and Andreas Schreiber apiece. When Rufful ended the Dartmouth drought with his second triple, the Green would maintain a double-digit advantage for the remainder of the half, spanning 8:45.

Junior Jabari Trotter followed up Rufful's trey with one of his own before Eggleston warmed up with a three-pointer of his own. Freshman Gediminas Bertasius then provided six of the next eight points for the Big Green as the lead ballooned to 16 at 30-14. Eggleston reached 10 points with another three before the end of the half, but Dartmouth got the last say as Melville hit a one-handed floater in the lane as time expired, leaving the score 34-21.

Melville picked up where he left off by sinking another shot out of the break, but Penn quickly seized control with eight straight points. Tyler Bernardini found the range immediately with a 16-footer followed by his first of his four three-pointers in the second half. Miles Cartwright converted a three-point play to bring Penn with seven at 36-29.

Minutes later with the score at 40-31 after a long Trotter jumper, Bernardini started a seven-point surge with another triple before Turley swatted in a putback then jammed home a dunk with two hands. He got a little over-enthusiastic however, and was whistled for a technical for hanging on the rim. Dixon knocked down both free throws, and Bertasius laid one in to boost the Big Green lead back to six at 44-38.

The Quaker three-pointers began in earnest at this point with Zack Rosen drilling one with just under 12 minutes to play. Dartmouth did force turnovers on the next three Penn possessions, but Cartwright, Bernardini, Eggleston and Rosen each drained a three-point dagger over the next five possessions during a 15-1 run, which quickly gave Penn an eight-point lead, 53-45, with six minutes on the clock.

Clive Weeden scrambling for a loose ball.

Three times the Big Green got within six points before the Quakers ripped off nine straight points to put the game away. Bernardini put the exclamation point on the game with his fourth three-pointer to cap the run just under the two-minute mark. Rufful sank one more three-pointer before time expired, bringing the season to a close for Dartmouth.

After holding a 16-12 advantage on the boards in the first half, the Green corralled just eight more off the glass over the final 20 minutes while Penn snared 21 rebounds. Rufful and Dixon joined Melville in double figures with 11 and 10 points, respectively, while Griffin led Dartmouth with five rebounds.

Bernardini had 16 points, all in the second half, Rosen tallied 13 and Cartwright pitched in 10. Both Eggleston and Bernardini also had eight rebounds to lead all players.

Dartmouth finishes the 2010-11 campaign with an identical record as the previous season, both overall and in Ivy League play. Penn has one more game on its docket, and it's a big one: at home against Princeton (23-6, 11-2 Ivy), which needs a victory in order to force a one-game playoff with Harvard for the Ivy League crown. Otherwise, the Crimson will win its first league championship outright and play in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1946.

Note: Weeden finished his career having played in 109 games, tying a school record, plus blocked 68 shots to rank among the school's top 10 all-time.