Hanover
“This is how you dream of how your last game in college will be,” said a slightly stunned Fanni Szabo, the lone senior on a Dartmouth team that lost by 30 points at Princeton last month. “The whole season came together.”
The last time Dartmouth beat Princeton, during the 2008-09 season, the Big Green’s current freshmen were in fifth grade. On Saturday, Dartmouth committed 23 turnovers, grabbed nine fewer rebounds than the visitors and was outscored, 30-16, in the paint. Princeton’s 18 percent field-goal shooting in the first half was a significant factor, including a 2-of-16 performance during the first quarter.
Courtney Banghart, Princeton’s 10th-year coach, said her player seemed to have mentally moved on to the Ivy League’s inaugural postseason tournament even before Saturday’s tipoff.
“Finishing has gotten in our way this season, and we showed our youth tonight, for sure,” said Banghart, a former Dartmouth player and assistant coach who’s produced an .832 league winning percentage and five Ancient Eight titles with the Tigers. “The game couldn’t end soon enough for us, because it was like this result didn’t matter.”
The second-place Tigers, 15-11 overall and 9-4 in Ivy play, will face third-place Harvard at the Palestra next weekend. Top-seeded Pennsylvania faces fourth-place Brown. Dartmouth finished 7-19 overall and 3-11 in league action, tying Columbia for seventh place in the Ancient Eight and landing in the cellar for the second time under fourth-year coach Belle Koclanes.
“We’re not happy with that, but we competed in every game we played this year with the exception of a few,” said Koclanes, who is 17-39 in Ivy play and 38-74 overall at Dartmouth. “In years past, there were a heck of a lot more games that we weren’t in. It’s only a matter of a few possessions that we’re not going to the Palestra.”
The Big Green led, 24-18, at halftime and was up by 18 points midway through the third quarter. That lead was down to seven points by the start of the final stanza and the hosts clung to a 53-52 advantage with three minutes remaining. Guard Kate Letkewicz had a 3-point bucket and converted a layup for Dartmouth’s final points.
“The way we’ve competed in the last four games … we weren’t getting that kind of effort earlier in the year,” said Koclanes, whose team went 2-2 during that stretch and threw a scare into Penn on Friday during its penultimate game. “Now, we have to learn to bring that effort and focus and intensity consistently.”
Szabo, a Hungarian who was honored before the game with the playing of her country’s national anthem, had 12 points on 4 of 15 shooting from the floor and played 39 minutes. Andi Norman and Letkewicz each produced 14 points, eight rebounds and five turnovers and freshman point guard Annie McKenna had eight points and three assists in 22 minutes.
Dartmouth’s post players weren’t much of an offensive factor, with Olivia Smith and Isalys Quinones combining for six points. The Big Green shot 45.1 percent from the floor and Szabo sank her team’s only two free throws. Princeton connected on just 2 of 17 shots from 3-point range.
“When we played at Princeton, that was probably the low point of the season for us,” Koclanes said. “I didn’t even recognize our team. We let them push us around and pressure us and we played timid.
“As long as the season is, I wish it was longer, because our team’s gotten better.”
Dartmouth’s players now face a grueling spring and summer with impressively-bearded strength coach Mark Kulbis, who previously worked at Notre Dame and Ohio State. Koclanes said her troops need the toil.
“Physically, we’re outmatched,” the coach said. “We’ve finally gotten the players to understand the importance of fitness and training. It’s hard that at year four, we’re ending at the bottom of the league again, but it’s not the same as when we walked in here that first year.”
Notes: Princeton had beaten Dartmouth by an average of 26 points during its winning streak against the Big Green. It is the longest such stretch against a league foe during the Dartmouth program’s 45-year history… Dartmouth assistant Addie Micir played on the last Princeton team to lose to Dartmouth… The Tigers were the only Ivy team Koclanes and Szabo had not beaten during their time at Dartmouth. Szabo finished 10th on the program’s career scoring list with 1,295 points and played Saturday in front of her mother, Andrea, and her father, Zsolt… Since the Ivy League went to a 12-game league schedule for the 1982-83 campaign, Dartmouth has won fewer than six Ivy games in a season seven times. Six of those results have come during the last seven years… Big Green point guard Amber Mixon made 20 of 39 free throws this season… Five of Dartmouth’s six freshmen averaged fewer than five minutes and two points per game… Former Dartmouth coach Chris Wielgus, who resigned in 2013, was 17-39 in Ivy play during her final four years, the same mark Koclanes has posted during her first four years on the job.
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.