Career-High 27 for Boudreaux Not Enough at Penn

Friday, February 5

Philadelphia, Pa.

6:00 PM

Dartmouth College

7-12, 1-4

Penn

7-11, 1-3

Dartmouth

Penn

Career-High 27 for Boudreaux Not Enough at Penn

2/5/2016 8:01:00 PM | Men's Basketball

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By: Dartmouth

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — Holding a 59-54 lead with five minutes to play, the Dartmouth Big Green could not fend off host Penn as the Quakers scored 17 of the game's final 22 points to rally for a 71-64 victory on Friday night at The Palestra. Darien Nelson-Henry scored 17 of his 19 points in the second half to lift Penn (7-11, 1-3 Ivy) to their first Ivy League victory of the season, while freshman Evan Boudreaux tallied a career-high 27 in the third straight defeat for Dartmouth (7-12, 1-4 Ivy).

Senior Connor Boehm and sophomore Taylor Johnson, who also posted a career high with 16 points, drilled consecutive three-pointers to give the Big Green a 59-54 lead with 5:18 to play. But a pair of buckets and a free throw for the Quakers knotted the score at 59 with 3:29 on the clock.

Both sides missed on opportunities to take the lead, including Dartmouth failing to convert the front end of a one-and-one at the line. It wasn't until Jake Slipe gathered a loose ball off a missed Penn shot and drove for a three-point play with 1:24 remaining that the deadlock was broken.

Boudreaux answered by sinking two foul shots a few seconds later, but Nelson-Henry swished a hook shot in the lane to boost the lead back to three at 64-61 with 58 seconds showing on the clock. After the Big Green called their final two timeouts, they misfired on two three-point attempts that would have tied the score. Penn's Darnell Foreman scooped up the second miss and was fouled. He then knocked down both free throws for his first points of the night, then converted three more in four attempts in the final 16.2 seconds to seal the victory.

Dartmouth opened the game hot out of the gate, hitting their first four shots for an 8-0 lead to force Penn to call a timeout after just 2:21 had elapsed. The two teams traded buckets before the Quakers went on a 17-2 run that lasted nearly seven minutes as Jackson Donahue, Matt Howard and Sam Jones all rained down three-pointers.

Boudreaux briefly quelled the tied with a lean-in jumper, but Howard answered back with another triple. The next nine points, however, belonged to the Big Green with Johnson drilling a trey and the defense forcing two turnovers that led to layups as Dartmouth reclaimed the lead, 23-22, with 6:37 left in the half.

Penn responded quickly with a layup, but managed just one more field goal over the final six minutes of the half. The Big Green, meanwhile, got two three-pointers from senior point guard Malik Gill with a Boudreaux layup off a feed from Gill on the break sandwiched between to take a 31-27 lead into the locker room.

The second half began with a Nelson-Henry layup, only to have Dartmouth score seven straight, capped by a Boudreaux trifecta, for its biggest lead of the night at nine points, 38-29. The lead was still nine with just over 15 minutes top lay when Jake Silpe, who contributed 13 points to the Quaker cause, hit a shot from behind the arc.

Twice Nelson-Henry converted three-point plays, while Boudreaux was able to get all but one of those points back with a long jump shot and a three-point play of his own. Penn was able to tie the score at 50, however, after another Nelson-Henry bucket and Donahue's third three-pointer of the evening with 9:30 to play.

It took more than two minutes for the Quakers to claim their first lead of the second stanza when Howard capped off a wild loose-ball sequence with a layup. But Boehm and Johnson hit their three-pointers to set up the final five minutes of the game.

Both teams suffered through a rash of turnovers with Penn coughing the ball up 22 times and Dartmouth 19, but the Quakers converted those Big Green miscues into 24 points while the visitors tallied just 21. Each side popped eight three-pointers while Penn had a slight advantage overall from the floor, shooting 48.1 percent (25-of-52) to Dartmouth's 44.4 percent (24-of-54). The Quakers also had an advantage at the foul line thanks to the final minute of action, hitting 13-of-17 (.765) compared to 8-of-12 (.667) for Dartmouth, which entered the game leading the league in free throw percentage.

Boudreaux, who was 10-of-21 with a pair of triples and perfect at the line in five attempts, also led all players with eight rebounds. Johnson was on target, drilling 7-of-11 with two treys of his own for his 16 points, while he and Gill both swiped the ball three times.

Nelson-Henry hit 8-of-10 field goals and 3-of-5 foul shots while Slipe did a bit of everything, going 4-of-8 from the floor with a two treys while dishing out eight assists and collecting five steals. Donahue also had 13 points for the Quakers, and Max Rothschild led the team with six rebounds before fouling out.

Dartmouth will attempt to snap its three-game skid when it plays at Princeton (13-5, 3-1 Ivy) — which beat Harvard tonight, 83-62 — on Saturday night at 6 p.m. in a game that will be shown live on ESPN3 as well as the Ivy League Digital Network. The Quakers will play host to the Crimson (9-12, 1-4 Ivy) at 7 p.m.

Notes: Since Dartmouth last won an Ivy League title in 1959, it is just 4-53 at The Palestra … Princeton's Jadwin Gym has also been a house of horrors for the Big Green, having gone 3-43 there since it opened.