Letkewicz Double-Double Leads Dartmouth to Win

Friday, November 24

Hanover, N.H.

4:00 PM

Dartmouth College

3-0

Rhode Island

1-4

Rhode Island

Dartmouth

Letkewicz Double-Double Leads Dartmouth to Win

11/24/2017 7:30:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Box Score Belle Koclanes Kate Letkewicz Emily Slagle Cy Lippold Isalys “Ice” Quiñones Annie McKenna Box Score PDF ILN Highlights

By: Dartmouth

HANOVER, N.H. – The Dartmouth women's basketball team had its second consecutive game where at least four players scored in the double digits, to take down Rhode Island at Leede Arena on Friday night, 70-54.

Senior Kate Letkewicz and junior Cy Lippold both scored 17 points apiece while senior Emily Slagle dropped 14 and junior Isalys Quiñones scored 11. Letkewicz also grabbed 10 rebounds for her first double-double of the season.

With Annie McKenna still out, Lippold played 39 minutes at the guard slot, and was a force for her team on both sides of the ball. Along with her 17 points, the East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania native also grabbed five rebounds and had two steals.

This is the first time since the 2014-15 season that the Big Green have started out 3-0, and the Rams fall to 1-4 following Friday's game.

“The way we want to play from an offensive standpoint you really saw in that first half, and in all three of our first halves, we want to push tempo and score early in the shot clock,” said head coach Belle Koclanes. “It's nice when the ball is going in the basket, but we have multiple threats on the floor, so people can step up for one another.

“On the defensive side of the floor, we need to do a better job of getting stops. We zoned for the first time today, anticipating Rhode Island getting into the paint, we wanted to limit some of that, and it wasn't really flowing the way we wanted to so we went to more man-to-man pressure, to get the tempo where we want it. The tempo is key for us offensively and defensively in building our identity.”

In the first quarter both teams exchanged buckets and were playing fairly evenly, until Dartmouth went on a 5-0 run and took the lead 14-9 with three minutes left to play. Rhode Island cut back into the lead from a three-pointer by Marta Vargas and pushed back tying it up 17-17 with 18 seconds to go, before a buzzer-beater trey from Slagle took the 20-17 lead.

The Big Green took their three-point lead and ran with it, scoring back-to-back three's from Letkewicz in the fourth and sixth minutes of the second quarter. With a 10-point lead, the home team did not let off the gas, but the Rams were fighting to claw back into the lead on a three-point shot by Abby Streeter, with Dartmouth still leading 31-22.

Free throws and capitalizing on turnovers continued the Big Green scoring into halftime, holding a 15-point, 43-28 lead over Rhode Island. In the first half, Dartmouth scored 10 points off of turnovers alone, and 11 second chance points.

Going into the third quarter with a solid lead, the Big Green continued to push the pace of the game, taking their biggest lead of the game with 2:53 left in the quarter, up by 22 points. Four-straight layups from the home team and a good free throw attempt from Quiñones, put Dartmouth up 58-36 nearing the last 10 minutes of the game.

Entering the last quarter with an 18-point lead and score of 60-42, URI slowly tried to close the gap, taking a 6-0 run in the opening three minutes of the fourth. Lippold sunk a jumper at the 5:51 mark, followed by a bucket from Quiñones, but the Rams were determined to score, with two-straight layups from Dina Motrechuk the lead was cut to 12 points.

The Big Green were able to hold off scoring and control the ball more in the last three minutes of play, with two late free throws from Gabrielle Green getting Rhode Island's score to 54 points.

Both teams attempted the same amount of shots from field goal range, with 57, but Dartmouth made 27 while the road team made 21. The Big Green shot 81.8 percent from the free throw line tonight and was 36.8 percent from the three-point line.

Dartmouth hosts NJIT on Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m., at Leede Arena, to end its four-game home stand.