NCAA Tournament First Round: Dartmouth Takes on Colorado Friday at BC

Friday, May 10

Newton, Mass.

4:00 PM

Dartmouth College

Colorado

Photo by: John and Matt Risley

NCAA Tournament First Round: Dartmouth Takes on Colorado Friday at BC

5/8/2019 1:09:00 PM | Women's Lacrosse

Big Green and Buffaloes meet for the first time in the NCAA Tournament Friday at 4 p.m.

By: Pat Salvas

GAME 17
No. 18 Dartmouth Big Green (11-5) vs.
No. 21 Colorado Buffaloes (10-7)
Date/Time: Friday, May 10, 2019 | 4 PM
Location: Newton Campus Lacrosse Field | Newton, Mass.
All-Time Series: First Meeting
NCAA Tournament Appearances: Dartmouth, 15 | Colorado, 3
NCAA Tournament Record: Dartmouth, 11-14 | Colorado, 1-2

ESPN+ Stream | Live Stats | Dartmouth Notes | Colorado Notes | @DartmouthWLAX

FRIDAY'S GAME
•   The Dartmouth women's lacrosse team makes its 15th NCAA Tournament appearance in program history and its first since 2013 when it takes to the field Friday against Colorado.
•   The two teams will play a first-round game at Boston College's Newton Campus Fields with the opening draw set for 4 p.m.
•   The winner of Friday's game will play the second-seeded Eagles Sunday at 1 p.m.
•   The game will be carried live on the ACC Network as well as ESPN+.

LAST TIME OUT
•   The Big Green fell one-goal short against Penn in the Ivy League Tournament Semifinal last Friday at Columbia, 15-14.
•   Kierra Sweeney and Elizabeth Mastrio each had five points in the game to lead the team. Sweeney scored five times, while Mastrio netted four and dished out a helper.
•   Kellen D'Alleva continued to pace the team in assists, picking up two in the game and pushing her single-season total to a program-best 43 in 2019.

TOURNEY TIME
•   For the first time since 2013, Dartmouth's name was called in the NCAA Tournament Selection Show on Sunday night.
•   In those 15 appearances, the Big Green are 11-14.
•   Interestingly enough, Dartmouth's last NCAA Tournament victory was a first-round game against Boston College in 2013 in which the Green defeated the Eagles, 11-8, on Syracuse's soccer field. Dartmouth would fall to the Orange two days later.
•   The Green and White played a 2012 NCAA first-round game at Syracuse as well, making the program's last three games in the national postseason on the Orange's home field.
•   The last time Dartmouth played an NCAA Tournament game in Massachusetts was the 2006 national title game, which it lost, 7-4, to Northwestern. A junior defender on that Wildcats' team was Ann Elliott Whidden, the current head coach at Buffalo.

SCOUTING THE BUFFS
•   Colorado comes into the tournament with a 10-7 overall record.
•   At 8-2 in the Pac-12 this season, the Buffaloes were seeded second in the conference postseason. After a bye, CU was able to best Stanford, 16-9, before falling in the league title game, 12-3, to Southern Cal.
•   Miranda Stinson is having a pretty solid senior season, leading the way with 74 points and a career-high 59 goals.
•   Not to be overlooked are Samantha Nemirov, who has 60 points on 44 goals and a team-high 16 assists and Sadie Grozier and her 32 goals and 41 points.
•   Those three players have accounted for 68.5% of the team's total point output and 68.1% of the goal scoring.
•   It will most likely be Julia Lisella in goal for the Buffs as she started in all but one of the team's 17 games this season. In that time, she is 9-7 with a 9.35 goals against average and a .485 save percentage.

FIRST IN THE TOURNEY
•   Colorado and Dartmouth have never played prior to this weekend.
•   Friday will mark the first time that Dartmouth will play an opponent for the first time in program history in an NCAA Tournament game.
•   A 2005 quarterfinal round game against Georgetown in Hanover in which the home team won 13-3 was just the second game between the Big Green and the Hoyas, making it the fewest games played against an NCAA opponent before this season.
•   The teams had played 14 years before their postseason meeting, a 15-5 win in 1991 in a game played in Washington D.C.

SWEENEY'S STATS
•   Thanks to her fifth goal of the game against Penn last week, Kierra Sweeney became the sixth Dartmouth player in program history to reach 70 points in a single season.
•   Now tied for fourth with Katieanne Christian (2005) and Jacque Weitzel (1999), she is within 10 of the top-three performances by a Big Green player over the course of a spring: Weitzel, 79 (2000), Lauren Holleran, 73 (1995) and Weitzel, 72 (1998).
•   Sweeney's 57 goals this season already rank as the fifth-best single-season total as well. Fourth place is occupied by Weitzel's 1998 season that saw her score 62 times.

OLD FRIENDS MEET AGAIN!
•   Colorado's Ann Elliott Whidden and Dartmouth head coach Danielle Spencer played one season together at Northwestern as their playing careers overlapped during the 2007 season.
•   The Wildcats won the national title that season, besting Virginia in the final, 15-13, to finish the year 21-1.
•   Spencer was a freshman that year, scoring 11 times in 17 games.
•   Elliott, a senior in 2007, was an Inside Lacrosse third-team All-America selection and a stalwart on the Wildcats' defensive unit that allowed a NCAA-low 6.1 goals per game while allowing just two teams to score in double figures all year.

100/100
•   With her second of three draw controls against Penn, Elizabeth Mastrio became the third player in school history with 100 draws and 100 career goals.
•   Jaclyn Leto '16 finished her playing career with 151 goals and 131 draws, while Whitney Douthett was the first to accomplish the feat, posting 103 tallies and 135 DCs.
•   Mastrio also moved into 15th all-time at Dartmouth with 150 career points and 15th with 109 goals.
•   Her 41 assists are tied for 14th all-time in program history.

D'ALLEVA DISHIN'
•   Her 43 assists in 2019 is the most ever by a Dartmouth player in a season, breaking the old mark of 39 that stood for 20 years prior to this season (Jen Greene in 1998).
•   Her 47 career helpers now rank 7th all-time at Dartmouth.
•   Posted six games of four-or-more assists in 2019, including two games of six.
•   Her eight-point effort (2-6-8) against Brown in the Ivy League opener on 3/2 was the most by a Dartmouth player all season. She also had two games of seven points, both against Ivy foes (vs. Harvard and at Columbia).
•   As it stands now, her 43 assists rank 13th in the nation and second in the Ivy League, while her 2.69 per game are eighth nationally and second by any conference player.
•   Her 63 total points are seventh by an Ivy player and are 31 more than she had recorded in her first three seasons as a member of the Big Green COMBINED.

HAVING A HECKUVA YEAR IN THE MIDFIELD
•   Team captain and senior Kathryn Giroux had already established herself as one of the top players in the midfield coming into her final season in Hanover, but has taken her play to new heights in 2019.
•   First Team All Ivy League Unanimous Selection.
•   Her 10.43 draws per game in league games was not only the best figure, it was more than two-full draws better than the next closest.
•   12th all-time NCAA record for draw controls.
•   Currently fourth in NCAA draw controls per-game at 8.94.
•   Her 143 draws this season are a new Dartmouth record, besting the two previous marks of 133 and 108 Giroux herself had set in each of the last two years.
•   Her 401 career draws is the fourth-best figure amongst active players in Division I. Her 6.47 per game over the course of her career is fifth best by active players.
•   At 401 draws for her career, she is the Ivy League's all-time leader.
•   She is the only player in league history with three seasons of 100-plus draw controls
•   The previous Dartmouth record for draw controls in a game before Giroux came to Hanover was nine. She has tied or eclipsed that mark nine times this season alone and 22 times in the last three years alone. She established the new mark of 19 twice last year.
•   In addition to her prowess on the draw, Giroux has also tied her career high in both goals (11) and points (15) prior to Dartmouth's foray into the NCAA Tournament for the first time in her collegiate career in 2019.

WINNING BY… A GOOD AMOUNT
•   The Big Green have the 14th-best scoring margin of any team in the nation.
•   Dartmouth averages 5.38 more goals per game than its opponents in 2019.
•   That figure remains the best in the Ivy League as Princeton is 21st at 4.29 and Penn is 32nd at 2.53.

CLEARING UP
•   Dartmouth has been one of the best teams in the nation in clearing its own defensive zone this season.
•   With a 93.3% success rate, the Big Green are second nationally behind only Maryland (94.4%)
•   Only three times in the first 16 games this season has Dartmouth had four or more failed clear attempts in game.
•   When Dartmouth has less than three failed clears in a game, the team is 10-1.

WHAT'S AHEAD?
•   Were the Big Green to win on Friday, they would play BC Sunday at 1 p.m. in the second round.
•   That game would also be on the ACC Network and ESPN+.