Big Green Win Thriller Over Yale in Final Second, 59-58

Saturday, March 7

Hanover, N.H.

7:00 PM

Dartmouth College

14-14, 7-7Ivy

Yale

22-9, 11-3Ivy

Yale

Dartmouth

Big Green Win Thriller Over Yale in Final Second, 59-58

3/7/2015 9:04:00 PM | Men's Basketball

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By: Dartmouth

HANOVER, N.H. — With Dartmouth honoring its two senior players before taking on the Ivy League's leader in Yale, it was only fitting the duo would team up to provide the winning basket in the final second. John Golden lobbed an inbounds pass to classmate Gabas Maldunas, who dropped in the layup with 0.5 seconds to play to lift Dartmouth (14-14, 7-7 Ivy) to a thrilling 59-58 victory over the visiting Bulldogs (22-9, 11-3 Ivy) on Saturday night at a raucous Leede Arena.

With the victory, the Big Green have the opportunity to get a postseason bid for the first time in 56 years. As for Yale, it falls back into a tie with Harvard atop the league standings, forcing a one-game playoff at The Palestra next Saturday with a trip to the NCAA Tournament on the line. The Bulldogs have not had as long a drought since their last appearance in the Big Dance, but at 53 years, it is plenty long enough.

Maldunas would not have been in position to win the game had it not been for the exploits of freshman Miles Wright in the final 30 seconds. First, he ran down a long rebound and was fouled with 24 seconds left and Dartmouth trailing by five, 57-52. He proceeded to calmly convert both free throws, and 11 seconds later — after Golden tied up Javier Duren to give the Big Green possession — Wright drained a three-pointer to tie the score at 57.

Duren looked to redeem himself with the last shot for the win, but he was fouled by Golden with 2.3 seconds remaining. Although he misfired on his first attempt at the line, he canned the second for a one-point lead, 58-57.

Following a Yale timeout, Dartmouth threw the ball the length of the floor only to have the ball hit the floor before being swatted out of bounds by Yale's Justin Sears with 1.9 seconds still to play. That allowed Golden to make up for his foul with his pass to Maldunas, who was fouled as he sank the layup. The Lithuanian missed the free throw on purpose, leaving Yale with an 85-foot heave that fell well short as the buzzer sounded.

Gabas Maldunas posts up against Yale, March 7, 2015

Gabas Maldunas hit the game-winning shot with 0.5 seconds left in the game.

While Wright finished the game with 12 points, five rebounds and five steals, and Maldunas added 10 points and five boards, it was reserve forward Tommy Carpenter that led the Big Green in scoring by matching a career-high with 13 on 6-of-8 shooting. As a team, Dartmouth was 24-of-59 (.407) from the floor and just 4-of-19 (.211) from behind the arc. But the Big Green forced 18 Bulldog turnovers thanks to a season-high 13 steals to overcome a 38-30 rebounding deficit and a 7-of-13 night (.538) at the foul line.

Yale led the game for most of the evening as it jumped out to a 10-point lead at 17-7 barely nine minutes into the contest. It wasn't until junior Alex Mitola swished a three-pointer in the final minute of the opening stanza that Dartmouth enjoyed a lead at 29-28. But freshman reserve guard Makai Mason answered just before the buzzer with a pull-up 12-footer in the lane as he finished the half with 15 of the team- and season-high 19 points he would score on the night for a 30-29 Bulldog lead at the break.

Despite shooting 61.9 percent (13-of-21) over the first 20 minutes, Yale could not pull away from the Big Green as it coughed the ball up 11 times by the intermission.

The Bulldogs had just one three-pointer in the first half, but started to find the range in the second stanza, popping a trio of triples — two by Duren — in the first four minutes to maintain a four-point lead. Twice Sears extended the lead to seven with buckets, but Dartmouth answered each one, first by Carpenter, then by junior Malik Gill, who added another before Carpenter cut the deficit to one at 44-43 with a fast-break layup off a Wright steal with 11:48 to play.

Two minutes later Greg Kelley drilled his second triple of the game to boost Yale's advantage back to five, only to have junior Connor Boehm and Carpenter convert layups to make it 49-48 with 7:40 on the clock.

The lead was back to three with under three minutes to play when Gill pulled down a rebound off a Sears miss and threw an outlet pass to a wide-open Wright down the court for a dunk. Twice Armani Cotton went to the line to shoot two only to convert one each time, but Duren canned a pair with 35.5 seconds left for what seemed to be a secure 57-52 lead, only to be disappointed in the end.

Mason hit 9-of-11 shots on the night for his 19 points while Sears added 14 with nine rebounds and Duren chipped in 11. Cotton led all players on the glass with 10 rebounds.

Notes: Dartmouth owns a .500 record at the end of the regular season for the first time since the 1998-99 squad finished 14-12. That is also the last time the Big Green won 14 games in a season … Dartmouth recovered from a double-digit deficit for the second straight night, having rallied from being down 24 against Brown last night and 10 versus the Bulldogs tonight. It had just two such wins before this weekend dating back to the start of the 2011 calendar year … the Big Green have won three games on shots in the final second of play this season, beating IPFW on Nov. 28 with a three-pointer as time expired and Northern Illinois on another trey as overtime expired on Dec. 19 … Dartmouth has won five straight games for the first time in 10 years … Mitola is eight points shy of 1,000 in his career, and Maldunas is one steal shy of 100.