Sports Weekly 01/11/16

01.11.16

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL FALTERS AGAISNT HARVARD

MEN’S BASKETBALL FALLS SHORT AGAINST HARVARD DESPITE STRONG PLAY

WOMEN’S HOCKEY CONTINUES SEARCH FOR WINS

THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS WEEKLY

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BY THE NUMBERS

MONDAY, JANUARY 11, 2016

Women’s basketball drops Ivy League opener

4 Double-doubles on the season for Lakin Roland ’16

44 Combined points

by Wright ’18 and Boudreaux ’19

Women’s basketball looks for more offensive production across the board.

By ASHLEY DUPUIS

4

The Dartmouth Staff

Double-doubles on the season for Boudreaux ’19

30 Seconds before Laura Stacey ’16 scored after absence

01.11.16

The women’s basketball team fell to Harvard University 43-56 in its conference opener Saturday night at Leede Arena. Despite a late game surge, the Big Green could not regain early ground lost, dropping to 5-12 overall, while the Crimson improved to 6-8.

The Big Green was out-scored every quarter by the Crimson, despite Lakin Roland ’16 reaching double figures for the team with 21 points and 12 rebounds, giving her her fourth double-double of the season.

“You see us work really hard and compete at a high level in spurts,” head coach Belle Koclanes said.

“You don’t see us do it for 40 minutes straight and it’s hard to compete at our level when you don’t compete the whole way through. We’re going to continue to change that and find solutions.”

While Roland was the top scorer and rebounder for both sides, Harvard had four players score double figures compared to Dartmouth’s

Rebecca Asoulin ’17 Editor-in-Chief

Rachel DeChiara ’17 Publisher

Annie Ma ’17 Executive Editor

Maya Poddar ’17 Executive Editor

one.

“Lakin needs help,” Koclanes said.

“She has to bring it every single day and she knows that, but the bench and her fellow starters have to bring it more as well.”

In less than a minute into the first quarter, Roland scored five points, putting Dartmouth over Harvard 5-0. Harvard quickly answered with a 12-0 run, ending the sole Big Green lead of the game.

By the end of the second quarter, Harvard led 28-18 with Roland leading the team in points despite being stuck at the five points she made early in the game.

The Big Green came out of the locker room with more fervor in their play, closing the margin to six points.

JOB ORENGE/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

The Big Green’s rally, however, soon lost steam as Harvard tallied up quick points, giving the Crimson a 41-29 heading into the last period.

In the fourth quarter, Harvard went on a 7-0 run, creating a 19-point lead over the Big Green. Dartmouth still looked poised to strike back after back-to-back three pointers from Roland and another three from Andi Norman ’18.

Dartmouth rallied further with tight defense leading to a Harvard shot clock violation with 2:42 left.

Sticking true to a game of sporadic excellence, Dartmouth once again petered out when Roland received her fifth foul with 1:23 left to play, allowing Harvard to answer with three more points before the final

buzzer.

“We had good looks, but they just didn’t fall,” Roland said of the game.

Dartmouth’s late game comebacks fell short for a combination of reasons. Harvard outrebounded the Big Green 45-36 and forced more turnovers. Dartmouth converted the same number of three pointers as its opponents, but could not match Harvard’s overall totals in shots made.

“We didn’t play as hard as we could have in the beginning of the game,” Kate Letkewicz ’18 said. “We didn’t compete as much in the beginning which made a comeback difficult.”

Letkewicz finished with eight rebounds, the team’s second highest, and four points.

The loss to Harvard comes after Dartmouth went 3-1 in its last four games, with a recent 46-39 victory over the New Jersey Institute of Technology on Dec. 31.

Roland said that despite the loss, she hopes to instill confidence in her teammates.

“We all believe in each other and trust in each other, we just need to make that apparent on the court,” Roland said. “I want to show [the team] that we can make mistakes and be okay, but obviously we need to minimize them overall.”

Minimizing mistakes, especially early in the game, will be key for the Big Green if they hope to improve upon last season’s 5-9 record in the Ivy League and sixth place league finish. “[For the rest of the season], we have to compete consistently,” Letkewicz said. “It starts with practice and that will translate into the games.”

The team will take the court again on Saturday, Jan. 23 when they will take on Harvard again in Cambridge, Mass. Players say the keys in their next matchup with the Crimson will be defense and transitions.

Gayne Kalustian ’17 Ray Lu ’18 Sports Editors

Eliza McDonough ’18 Tiffany Zhai ’18 Photography Editors

The Big Green looks to pick up the pace in upcoming conference games.

JOB ORENGE/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

MONDAY, JANUARY 11, 2016

THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS WEEKLY

Men’s basketball surrenders early lead

By ALEXANDER AGADJANIAN The Dartmouth Staff

In the Ivy League opener for both schools, the Dartmouth men’s basketball team seized control early on in Saturday afternoon’s contest against Harvard in Cambridge, Mass. Surrendering a nine-point lead from its early run, the team kept the game close throughout the second half, until the Crimson (78, 1-0) pulled away in the final three minutes of the game to topple the Big Green (4-9, 0-1) by a score of 77-70.

For almost the entirety of the game, guard Miles Wright ’18 led all scorers, finishing with 23 points off an efficient 8-14 shooting clip and 5-8 from threepoint land. Evan Boudreaux ’19 added support throughout the game, totaling

“We knew they had some really good post players and we had to use some different schemes to slow them down and for a good majority of the game it worked.”

-EVAN BOUDREAUX ’18 a double-double with 21 points and 10 rebounds.

“It was just a heck of a college basketball game and unfortunately they made some shots down the stretch,” head coach Paul Cormier said. “We got good shots, we weren’t quite able to put them down. They get a couple timely breaks that we weren’t able to bounce back from.”

Cormier said that he was very proud of the team and thought that the players played hard and compete. He added that if the team continued to play like it did on Saturday night, it would continue to improve and become a very good basketball team in the near future.

The effort of the Boudreaux-Wright duo, however, could not outlast what the Crimson put up on the other end.

Agunwa Okolie scored a game and career high 29 points on the day, shooting 9-11 from the field and 10-10 from the charity stripe, with seven of those points coming in the final minute of play. Fellow senior Patrick Steeves provided a lethal contribution from deep, netting four of his five three-point attempts on his way to posting 20 points, also a career best.

Moreover, Harvard — a five-time defending conference champion, but picked to finish fourth in the preseason media poll — generated most of its scoring opportunities near the rim on Saturday, accruing a dominant 38-22 edge over Dartmouth in points in the paint. Perhaps a product of this focus on high-percentage shot-taking, the Crimson shot .528 from the field — well above their .458 season average entering

Saturday.

At the start of the opening half, almost all of the offensive chances for both squads came near the rim, making for a struggle inside the paint early on. That changed shortly thereafter, when Wright began to get hot from the field — the start of an excellent day for the sophomore. Having thrown down two dunks, netted a three-pointer and added a steal in under a one-minute span, Wright began to establish early signs of control for the Big Green.

Boudreaux helped in this early effort as well, as the freshman contributed a seven-point burst in less than three minutes at one point in the middle of the first half. Wright and Boudreaux combined for 18 of Dartmouth’s first 20 points. Furthermore, over the first 10 minutes of action, the Big Green was shooting .643 from the field.

“First league game, an away game, it’s always fun playing at Harvard, they got a good crowd, so we were just really inspired to play,” Wright said about the early success.

At the 5:40 mark, the Big Green dominance reached its apex thanks to two Kevin Crescenzi ’16 free throw makes, culminating in a nine-point lead, the largest the team would hold all afternoon. An in-game defensive improvement by Dartmouth factored heavily into this result as well. After Harvard scored near the rim at will in the early going — almost all off post-ups, lay-ins, dunks, or short shots — the visitors gradually sharpened up on defense as the first half went along. The Big Green refused to yield any easy shots, either notching more blocks or fouling Crimson players. For a 5:11 minute stretch during the first half, Harvard scored just one point.

“It was more of a team effort, especially on defense,” Boudreaux said after the game. “We knew they had some really good post players and we had to use some different schemes to slow them down, and for a good majority of the game it worked.”

But what was once a nine-point advantage with four minutes left in the half evaporated by the break, as Harvard reeled off a 13-4 run to close out the first 20 minutes of play. Freshman sharpshooter Corey Johnson capped the swift comeback with a three-point jumpshot — several feet off the line — at the buzzer. For as much as Dartmouth controlled the opening half, their rival quickly stripped a critical, comfortable lead in an away game environment.

At the half, Wright led all scorers with 15 points with a sharp 6-8 shooting from the field bolstered by three longrange conversions. On the other end, two Crimson players reached double digits at the break, with hot-shooting Steeves — also three long balls to his name — paving the way with 13 points. While the two teams posted similar overall stats by the halftime break, Harvard had left five points on the board — missing four of nine free throws — but benefited from 15 points

from bench players.

To commence the second half, it seemed as though Harvard would run away with the game after springing out to a 9-2 run in the first four minutes.

Yet following a Steeves three-pointer as part of this spurt, Wright quickly and decisively responded with another three-ball of his own — just 19 seconds later — to strike back.

For nearly the remainder of the contest, the two teams were inseparable.

Forward Brandon McDonnell ’16 made two free throws to grant Dartmouth its first lead of the second half eight minutes in, but Harvard fought back to regain a slim lead. From the 15:11 mark until 3:06, no more than three points ever stood between the two schools.

This precise juncture three minutes left in the game proved the most pivotal.

An and-one play by Steeves made it a two-possession lead for the Crimson and 53 seconds later, off a quick 7-0 run, Harvard had grown its lead to 7062 with minutes remaining. A spirited effort by the Big Green cut the deficit to three on two separate occasions in the dying embers of the game, but the Crimson’s Okolie canceled out Dartmouth’s gains both times. The senior could not have fulfilled closeout duties any better on Saturday in netting seven points in the last 0:52, as well as scoring 14 of his 29 points in the final 5:13 of the contest.

“It was just a heck of a college basketball game and unfortunately they made some shots down the stretch.”

-PAUL CORMIER, MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH Cormier said that Okolie drilled the open three at the end of the game while being double teamed as part of the Big Green’s defensive scheme. The bucket put the Crimson up five and forced the Big Green to play catch up.

Okolie was just 1-5 from three leading up to Saturday’s game. “[Harvard] missed some shots in the first half they normally make,” Cormier noted, “and in the second half, they made them. Down the stretch, they made some shots sometimes they don’t make. Okolie really hurt us. He hit a huge three, it was probably the backbreaker of the game.”

The Big Green takes on Canisius College on Tuesday in Leede Arena.

Last season Dartmouth qualified for the postseason for the first time in 56 years, only to fall to the Golden Griffins in the first round of the CollegeInsider. com Tournament. The rematch tips off at 7:00 p.m.

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RUNDOWN THE

Men’s Basketball SCHOOL

IVY

OVERALL

PRINCETON HARVARD COLUMBIA YALE CORNELL BROWN PENN DARTMOUTH

1-0 1-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-1 0-1

10-4 7-8 11-6 9-5 7-7 5-9 6-8 4-9

Women’s Basketball SCHOOL

IVY

OVERALL

PENN HARVARD BROWN COLUMBIA CORNELL YALE PRINCETON DARTMOUTH

1-0 1-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-1 0-1

10-2 6-8 12-2 10-4 8-6 9-8 11-4 5-12

Men’s Hockey SCHOOL

ECAC

OVERALL

QUINNIPIAC CORNELL RENSSELAER HARVARD ST. LAWRENCE YALE PRINCETON DARTMOUTH BROWN UNION COLGATE CLARKSON

10-0-2 6-1-1 4-1-4 4-2-3 4-2-1 3-3-2 3-7-2 3-5-0 2-5-2 2-6-2 2-6-1 0-5-2

19-1-3 11-2-2 11-7-4 8-3-3 10-7-2 9-4-3 4-12-2 6-8-1 4-8-3 9-7-5 6-14-1 8-9-2

Women’s Hockey SCHOOL

ECAC

OVERALL

QUINNIPIAC PRINCETON HARVARD CLARKSON COLGATE ST. LAWRENCE DARTMOUTH YALE CORNELL RENSSELAER BROWN UNION

10-1-3 9-4-1 7-3-1 5-3-2 3-2-4 5-5-0 4-5-2 4-5-1 3-4-2 3-5-2 1-9-0 0-8-2

17-1-4 15-4-1 10-4-1 17-3-2 11-4-6 11-10-1 4-11-2 5-11-1 7-7-2 5-11-4 3-13-0 0-16-5

THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS WEEKLY

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SPORTS

MONDAY, JANUARY 11, 2016

TUESDAY MONDAY LINEUP LINEUP

MEN’S LACROSSE No athletic AT VERMONT events 3 PM scheduled

Women’s hockey still looks to find its midseason stride

SEAMORE ZHU/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Women’s hockey players say they need more teamwork to pull together wins.

By SAM STOCKTON The Dartmouth Staff

The women’s hockey team’s losing streak stretched to nine games following back-to-back losses to No. 10 Colgate University and unranked Cornell University at Thompson Arena on Friday and Saturday. The Big Green (4-11-2, 4-5-2 ECAC) struck first in both contests before falling 4-2 and 5-3, respectively.

The team feels that every weekend it comes closer to restoring the form they showed earlier in the season, said head coach Mark Hudak.

The Big Green’s first win since its 2-0 Nov. 14 victory against Union College, however, remains elusive.

“They’re frustrated,” Hudak said. “They’re upset. They want to win. We’re there. We’re close and getting over that hump is the hard part. You just have to keep on working on it. I think they’ve done a good job of sticking together and believing that it’s going to happen.”

Working through the frustration is a focus of the team, co-captain Catherine Berghuis ’16 said, adding that the key is keeping faith in one another.

“We need to stay together,” she said. “Coach was saying after the game that at a time like this, we’ve had a losing streak or whatever you want to call it even though we’ve been playing a little bit better, you can’t break up. As a team, you need to play together. You can’t lose each other and you can’t try to do it your-

self. You can’t have one line doing one thing and the next one playing off a different sheet of music. We need to stay together and still be positive moving forward.”

Kennedy Ottenbreit ’17 opened the scoring on Friday night with her seventh goal of the season coming with under two minutes to play in the first period. Olivia Whitford ’16 and Brooke Ahbe ’18 assisted the goal. The game was Ahbe’s first since the Nov. 14 match-up with Union, having missed nearly two months due to injury.

The Big Green held the lead until the 18:53 mark of the second period when Raiders’ center Breanne Wilson-Bennett beat Dartmouth goaltender Robyn Chemago ’17.

The Raiders tallied another goal less than a minute later to take a 2-1 lead before heading into the locker room for the second intermission.

Early in the third, Wilson-Bennett struck again and the Big Green trailed 3-1. Just under ten minutes later, Lindsey Allen ’16 scored her team-leading ninth goal of the season to cut the lead in half. However, the Raiders notched an empty-net goal with only fifteen seconds to play, which cemented the Big Green’s eighth straight defeat.

On Saturday afternoon, cocaptain Laura Stacey ’16 tallied an unassisted goal just 30 seconds into the team’s match-up with Cornell, and, at least for a moment, the team appeared poised to snap the streak.

Stacey, coming off a gold medal for

the Canadian National Women’s Development Team in the Nations Cup, had returned to the Big Green lineup against Colgate.

“It’s definitely pretty tough just with the time change and the long day of travel, but it’s totally worth it to come back to play with your teammates,” Stacey said. “I’m glad I made it back in time for both these games.”

Despite these difficulties, Stacey registered an assist in the Colgate game and two goals and an assist against Cornell while generating

several other quality scoring opportunities for her team.

The Big Green lead was barely two minutes old when Cornell center Taylor Woods scored to tie the game.

After one successful Dartmouth penalty kill, Christian Higham was able to beat Shannon Ropp ’19 for a power play goal on Cornell’s second opportunity of the afternoon. Ropp was making her first career start and had not appeared at all since an exhibition game against McGill University. She appeared tentative early in the game but found her stride and eventually authored a twenty-four save effort.

Hudak said he thought Ropp did a really good job and competed well.

“Early on, it almost looked like she might be a little bit nervous, but I thought she settled right in and did a really nice job for us in net,” Hudak said.

Early in the second frame and trailing 2-1, Emma Korbs ’17 set up Stacey beautifully at the bottom of the circle, and Stacey roofed the puck past Cornell goalie Marlene Boissonnault to tie the game. As had been the story of the weekend for the team, the Big Green was unable to build on their momentum and instead surrendered a late secondperiod goal while on the power play, making the score a 3-2 Cornell at the second intermission.

“We felt like we were out-battling them, out-playing them in the second and then for them to score a

goal like that on a rush, especially a short-handed goal, it’s definitely tough,” Berghuis said An early Cornell goal was immediately answered when Ailish Forfar ’16 found the net, bringing the score to 4-3, but that was as close as the Big Green would get. Higham scored again with just over six minutes to play and the Big Green’s attempted rally came up short.

In the defeat, there were no tremendous lapses, but rather several smaller mishaps that ultimately proved highly detrimental.

“I thought the effort on our part was really great tonight,” Hudak said. “We played aggressively. We went after them, but it was death by paper cuts. We make one mistake here and they always seemed to take advantage of it, or we lose momentum. I really thought that was the tale of the game.”

Berghuis noted the difficulty in always attempting to come back from behind.

“It’s tough to go back and forth like that,” she said. “They get one goal and we fire back and then they get another one right back. It’s hard to play from behind like that. You’re trying to get the team going on the bench, and it’s definitely hard to come back from that.”

The team will go on the road next weekend, with match-ups against Clarkson and St. Lawrence Universities for its next opportunity to snap the skid.

SEAMORE ZHU/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

The Big Green’s hopes of snapping losing streak at home are dashed after dropping both weekends.