Heartbreak for Big Green in Overtime Loss at Stanford

Thursday, December 16

Palo Alto, Calif. / Maples Pavilion

10:00 PM

Dartmouth College

3-6,0-0Ivy League

Stanford

6-3,1-1Pac-12

OT 1

Dartmouth

Stanford

Taurus Samuels had a team-high 22 points.

Heartbreak for Big Green in Overtime Loss at Stanford

12/17/2021 12:17:00 AM | Men's Basketball

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A seven-point lead evaporated in the final minute, and the Cardinal survived the upset attempt

By: Rick Bender

PALO ALTO, Calif. — The Dartmouth men's basketball nearly pulled off its second upset of a power conference team on Thursday night, but Stanford stole a victory from the Big Green thanks to a game-tying bucket with 0.7 seconds remaining in regulation. The Cardinal (6-3) then ran away in overtime for an 89-78 win at Maples Pavilion despite Taurus Samuels scoring 22 and Brendan Barry adding 20 more for Dartmouth (3-6).

The Big Green led by as many as 12 early in the second half and still had an 11-point advantage nearly 10 minutes into the stanza. But Stanford's leading scorer this season, Harrison Ingram, gave the Cardinal its first lead in over 24 minutes, 63-62, with 4:31 to play on just his second basket of the night.

After Dartmouth head coach David McLaughlin called a timeout, his squad went right back to work reclaiming that lead as Barry knocked down his fifth 3-pointer of the evening, the Big Green's first field goal in over six-and-a-half minutes. Even when Jaiden Delaire, who led the Cardinal with 22 points, knotted the score at 65 on a putback, Samuels responded with a triple of his own. Again Delaire laid in a shot and again Samuels had an answer, spinning into the lane and sinking a fadeaway eight-footer. A Stanford turnover and foul allowed Garrison Wade to convert two free throws, and Aaryn Rai added a layup off a feed from Barry, putting Dartmouth up by seven, 74-67, with just 1:16 to play.

Now it was Cardinal head coach Jerod Haase's turn to call a timeout, and apparently he called upon the freshman Ingram to carry his team as he hit a short jumper in the lane and cranked a 3-pointer from the corner after a Big Green turnover, suddenly making it a two-point game with 42.8 seconds showing.

Dartmouth ran the clock down and shot a contested 3-pointer that failed to touch iron, leading to a shot-clock violation that gave Stanford a chance to tie or win the game. Once again, the Cardinal turned to Ingram, and he backed down his defender one-on-one before putting up a finger roll that just squirted above the rim and in to knot the score at 74. The Big Green were now facing their third overtime game of the young season.

The air seemed to come out of Dartmouth's sails as Ingram continued his surge with a bucket to start the extra period. When Noah Taitz rattled a 3-pointer and Brandon Angel slammed home a dunk and laid in another shot, Stanford quickly had a nine-point lead, 83-74, and 16 straight points going back to the final minute of regulation. Samuels finally ended the run with a jumper in the paint, but there was just 1:07 to play. Angel scored four more points on a layup and another dunk, putting the game out of reach.

"I told the guys that they deserved to win the game, but tentatively lost our edge at the end of the game and didn't play to win," McLaughlin said after the game. "We moved the ball really well, handled their pressure for most of the game and made plays, but we just didn't make the plays we had to at the end to secure the win."

Dartmouth came out of the gate with the pedal to the floor and never let up over the first 20 minutes. With a mixture of great ball movement, exceptional ball handling and some dead-eye marksmanship, the Big Green gave the Cardinal all they could handle.

The two teams traded buckets throughout the first 13 minutes as neither side led by more than two points with 16 lead changes and four ties in that span. Whether it was a Delaire bucket answered by Big Green forward Nate Ogbu at the other end, or a Wade 3-pointer matched by Angel at the other, the score simply oscillated back and forth up until it was tied at 27 when Josh Keefe dropped a layup through for the hosts.

Finally one team put together a run, and that team was Dartmouth as it ripped off nine straight points, beginning with a four-point play by freshman Ryan Cornish. The rookie added a pull-up jumper the next time down the court, and Barry buried a 3-pointer that led to a Stanford timeout with Dartmouth boasting a 36-27 advantage.

Following two solitary free throws by Keefe, Barry came up with three points the hard way, and Wade drilled his second triple of the half after a Delaire putback to give the Green their largest lead of the half, 42-31. Delaire and Samuels traded buckets to end the half with that 11-point Big Green lead intact, 44-33.

Dartmouth shot better than 50 percent from the floor in the first half (16-of-30, .533) as well as the perimeter (7-of-12, .583) while canning all five foul shots. The Big Green even held their own on the boards against the longer Cardinal squad, coming up two short of even (18-16) while turning the ball over only three times. Barry had 14 of his 20 points before the break, while Cornish added 11.

At one point in the second half, Stanford closed the gap to three following a Keefe dunk, but Dartmouth wouldn't give in, ballooning its bulge back to 11 as Barry popped a trey and the 6-1 Samuels scored twice in the lane. But it was after that last field goal that Dartmouth went into a scoring drought with just four free throws over nearly seven minutes when Barry hit his final 3-pointer of the game.

Joining Delaire in double figures for the Cardinal were Angel with 18 points on a perfect 7-of-7 from the floor, Ingram with 13 and Keefe with a career-high 12 in just the second start of his career to go with a team-best nine of the 45 Stanford rebounds.

Samuels was 7-of-13 from the floor with a trifecta and 7-of-8 at the line to account for his 22 points. Barry was 5-of-11 behind the arc while he and Samuels both had six rebounds to lead the Big Green. The other player in double digits was Cornish with 16 on 6-of-12 field goals and two 3-pointers.

Dartmouth ended the night shooting 45.9 percent (28-of-61) overall and 45.5 percent (10-of-22) from distance, compared to 51.5 percent (35-of-68) for Stanford — including 9-of-11 in the final six minutes of action — and 35.3 percent (6-of-17) from downtown. The Cardinal attempted 11 more free throws but made just one more, hitting 13-of-25 (.520) to the Big Green's 12-of-14 (.857), but they had a big 45-31 advantage on the glass.

Dartmouth continues its West Coast swing on Sunday when it plays at California (6-5) at 1 p.m. (PST). The game will be shown live on the Pac-12 Network Bay Area.

Notes: In its second game of the season, Dartmouth defeated Georgetown, 69-60, the Big Green's first win over a power conference team in 32 years … the two highest-scoring games of Samuels' career have come against the Hoyas (23) and now Stanford … Dartmouth has dropped five straight games, two in overtime and another two by three points … the Green have also lost seven straight to the Cardinal since winning the initial meeting in 1938 … one of those losses to Stanford came in the 1942 NCAA Championship game, 53-38.