Big Green Bested by Yale, 75-57

Saturday, February 8

New Haven, Conn. / Lee Amphitheater

7:00 PM

Dartmouth College

7-14, 0-6Ivy

Yale

17-5, 5-1Ivy

Dartmouth

Yale

Taurus Samuels scored nine points at Yale.

Photo by: Gil Talbot

2/8/2020 8:53:00 PM | Men's Basketball

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Dartmouth couldn't maintain its strong shooting after halftime

By: Rick Bender

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Azar Swain scored 16 of his 21 points in a little more than the first eight minutes for Yale, but it wasn't until the second half that the Bulldogs took control and pulled away from visiting Dartmouth on Saturday night, defeating the Big Green, 75-57. Yale (17-5, 5-1 Ivy) also got 17 points from Paul Atkinson as the Elis reclaimed first place in the league standings, while Dartmouth (7-14, 0-6 Ivy) fell for the ninth straight game.

Chris Knight was mired in foul trouble all evening, but still managed to lead the Big Green with 12 points in just 18 minutes before fouling out with 3:51 to play. James Foye added 11, but after shooting 53.8 percent in the first half, Dartmouth was held to just 32 percent after the break and suffered through a nine-minute stretch with just two points.

Swain hit his first six shots on the evening, four from long range, with the last one giving Yale a 23-9 lead with 11:44 to play in the half. But Dartmouth scratched its way back into the game, starting with a Wes Slajchert 3-pointer. After the two teams traded buckets, the lead oscillated between eight and 10 points for a few minutes before Ian Sistare scored three the hard way to close the deficit to five at 30-24 with 6:22 left in the half.

Sistare added a 3-pointer, and Foye answered a Yale trey with one of his own, starting a seven-point run that he finished with a driving layup, knotting the score at 35 and just 90 seconds before the intermission. But the Bulldogs would not allow Dartmouth to take the lead and went to the locker room with a 40-36 lead.

Offense proved hard to come by for the Green in the second stanza as the Yale defense held Dartmouth to six points in the first 12 minutes. The Bulldog offense, meanwhile, built the lead back into double digits, 52-40, on a Matthue Cotton triple with 14:22 to play. When Isiah Kelly dropped in a layup five minutes later, Yale had its largest lead of the night at 18 points, 60-42.

Dartmouth finally found its stroke again and threatened to get back into the game with an 8-0 run fueled by 3-pointers by Trevon Ary-Turner and Foye. With just under two minutes to go, it looked as if the Big Green would close within single digits, but a Foye 3-pointer was waved off due to a moving screen violation. Dartmouth did not score again as the Bulldogs tallied the final seven points of the game.

Swain finished the night 7-of-13 from the floor and 5-of-8 from long range with a pair of foul shots for his 21 points, and Atkinson was an efficient 7-of-10 shooting with a game-high eight rebounds as Yale beat the Big Green on the glass, 38-27. The Bulldogs shot exactly 50 percent (26-of-52) as a team, including 41.7 percent (10-of-24) from distance, but only 56.5 percent (13-of-23) at the charity stripe.

Knight only took six shots, hitting five of them, and was 2-of-2 at the line for his dozen points, while Foye was harassed into a 4-of-12 night overall and 2-of-7 from the perimeter. Dartmouth finished the night 22-of-51 (.431) on field goals and only 5-of-20 (.250) behind the arc.

Dartmouth returns home next weekend to host Columbia and Cornell on Friday and Saturday, respectively. Both games will tip at 7 p.m. amd be streamed live on ESPN+ with Bob Lipman and Dave Faucher calling the action, while Brett Franklin will bring fans the action in an audio stream on the official website of Dartmouth athletics, DartmouthSports.com.

Notes: Dartmouth has now lost 14 consecutive conference contests and 20 straight road games in league play … Knight is just 12 points away from becoming the 30th player in Big Green history to score 1,000 in a career.