Season-High 85 Points Not Enough at Fairfield

Monday, January 4

Fairfield, Conn.

7:00 PM

Dartmouth College

4-8

Fairfield

7-6

Dartmouth

Fairfield

Season-High 85 Points Not Enough at Fairfield

1/4/2016 8:54:00 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score Box Score (HTML)

By: Dartmouth

FAIRFIELD, Conn. — Dartmouth senior Connor Boehm matched a career-high with 24 points, but host Fairfield featured three players with at least 20 points as the Stags sent the Big Green back to Hanover with a 97-85 defeat. Marcus Gilbert led Fairfield (7-6) with 21 points, 18 in the second half, while Tyler Nelson and Jerry Johnson Jr. chipped in 20 for the Stags.

While Boehm was knocking down 9-of-15 from the floor with a three-pointer and 5-of-6 at the foul line for his 24 points, freshman Evan Boudreaux was contributing 18 points of his own. Both players had seven rebounds for Dartmouth (4-8), as did senior Tommy Carpenter to equal a personal high, and in just nine minutes off the bench. The Big Green enjoyed a sizable 39-27 advantage on the boards, but 16 turnovers led to 22 Fairfield points.

Dartmouth trailed most of the night, but Boehm twice gave the Green a one-point lead midway through the second half on back-to-back buckets. But Fairfield always had an answer, and Johnson put the Stags back on top for good at 60-59 with 11:30 to play.

After being called for just four fouls in the first half, Dartmouth heard the whistles early and often in the second half. When sophomore Taylor Johnson was hit with an offensive foul, head coach Paul Cormier had enough and was hit with a technical foul. Nelson hit both free throws for Fairfield, then the Stags' Johnson drained his fifth three-pointer of the game for a sudden six-point lead at 65-59.

The difference oscillated between four and six points for a few minutes, but the Stags started to pull away when Mike Kirkland sank a pair of free throws and Curtis Cobb stole a pass under the basket and hit the easy layup for a 75-65 lead with 6:22 to play.

Both teams employed a full-court press to disrupt the other, which led to many more points. The Stags boosted their lead to as many as 14 with four minutes on the clock, but Dartmouth kept hanging around as freshman Guilien Smith, who finished the night with 11 points, drilled a three-pointer to make it 88-80. That was as close as the Big Green would get as Fairfield upped its advantage to 14 again before settling for the 97-85 victory.

Although Dartmouth scored the first points of the night, Fairfield threatened to run away with the game in the early going thanks to a 10-point run in just a minute's time as the Stags opened up a 14-4 lead. Nelson provided the last seven of those points, capping the run with a three-pointer. But a two-hand jam by senior Brandon McDonnell to end the run signaled that the Big Green would not shy away from the challenge.

Boudreaux closed the gap to four with a layup as Carpenter fed him with a nifty interior pass on the break. When Smith popped a trey from the corner and McDonnell sank a baseline jumper, Dartmouth was suddenly within one at 20-19. Just as suddenly, however, Johnson rained down back-to-back three-pointers to put the Stags back up by seven.

The deficit was chopped down to three, 32-29, when Boehm converted a pair of free throws with three minutes left in the half, only to have Steve Smith launch a long ball for Fairfield. Boehm answered right back with one from distance, only to be trumped by a Johnson trifecta. Dartmouth was able to run off the next six points, capped by Boehm who stole a pass and drove for a layup, knotting the score at 38 with 11 seconds on the clock. The tie lasted all of six seconds as Fairfield raced up the court, allowing Nelson to pop a three to give the Stags a 41-38 lead at the break.

Fairfield had eight three-pointers at halftime in 22 attempts (.364), then hit four more to finish the night hitting 40 percent on a dozen triples. The Stags shot 55.9 percent (33-of-59) overall, including a whopping 68.0 percent (17-of-25) in the second half. And after going just 1-of-3 at the charity stripe over the first 20 minutes, Fairfield hit 18-of-25 in the second stanza thanks to 17 Dartmouth fouls.

Gilbert hit 6-of-11 field goals (3-of-8 from downtown) and 6-of-9 at the line while leading all players with nine rebounds, narrowly missing out on a double-double. Johnson was particularly efficient in scoring his career-high 20 points, going 7-of-10 overall and 5-6 behind the arc. Nelson was nearly as deadly at 6-of-9 overall and 3-of-6 on three-pointers, adding 5-of-7 free throws as well. Jerome Segura chipped in eight points while dishing out nine assists, nearly half of the Stags' 19 helpers.

Dartmouth finished the night hitting 46.9 percent (30-of-64) from the floor and 38.9 percent (7-of-18) from distance. After canning all 10 foul shots in the opening half, the Big Green were just 8-of-13 after the intermission to finish the game at a solid 78.3 percent. A fourth Dartmouth player reached double figures in sophomore Miles Wright with 12 points.

Dartmouth will play its first Ivy League contest of the season when it travels to Harvard (6-8) on Saturday for a game to be televised by NESN and streamed live outside of the New England region on the Ivy League Digital Network. Tip-off is slated for 2 p.m.

Notes: The 97 points are the most for a Dartmouth opponent since Brown hit for 100 on Feb. 26, 2011 … no Big Green opponent had scored even 90 since … the 85 points for the Big Green are their most since an 87-78 win over Cornell on March 1, 2014 and their second-most in the six seasons since Cormier returned to Dartmouth … this was the first game between the Big Green and Fairfield in just over 30 years. The Stags have won all three meetings … Dartmouth has not won a game this season when trailing at the half, nor has it lost a game in which it led at the break … Boehm has 952 points in his career, putting him on track to become the 28th player in Big Green history to reach 1,000.