HANOVER — The Ivy League features seven men’s lacrosse teams, and six of them might earn berths in the 18-team NCAA Division I tournament next month.
The seventh? It’s Dartmouth College, which Saturday lost its record 34th consecutive league contest, 16-12, to Pennsylvania at Scully-Fahey Field.
There’s little doubt the Ivy League is the country’s best conference in the sport, as the hapless Big Green can vehemently testify.
“Penn has three or four guys who are (future) pros,” said eighth-year Dartmouth coach Brendan Callahan, who won his first-ever league game in 2015 but hasn’t experienced one since. “We gave them too big of a lead to start with and spent the rest of the day fighting back.
“They have a ton of firepower and they had a run in the middle of the third quarter that put it out of reach.”
The NCAA’s men’s lacrosse ratings power index for its 73 Division I teams factors a squad’s winning percentage and its strength of schedule. Ivy League schools comprise six of the top 15, with Princeton (2) followed by Penn (4), Yale (6), Cornell (8), Brown (9) and Harvard (15).
Dartmouth is 34th and concludes its season at Brown next weekend. The Big Green has not reached the four-team Ivy League tournament, which determines the conference’s automatic qualifier for the national tournament, since the event began in 2010.
Dartmouth trailed, 6-1, early in the second quarter but forged an 8-8 tie by scoring the first three goals after intermission. Penn went on a five-goal run, however, seizing control of an increasingly chippy clash.
The Quakers’ Ben Smith caught the ball in front of an unguarded net with 20 seconds to play, looked around and waited several seconds before flicking it into the twine, inspiring Dartmouth’s Joe Azelby to run him over like a shopping cart abandoned on train tracks.
The Big Green’s Colin McGill and Tommy Rogan each had four points.
“Our plan was to win faceoffs and control the game,” said Callahan, whose team won nine of 31 draws. “I thought we did a good job when we were on offense. Putting up 12 goals against that team is a pretty good output.
“On defense, though, some of their shooters were too much for us to handle. We needed to make a few more stops.”
Callahan’s heart presumably breaks for his 10 seniors, who were honored after their final home game. The coach began recruiting some in that group when they were high school freshmen, and they could be the program’s fourth consecutive senior class to graduate without winning an Ivy League contest. The Ivies did not play league games in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Asked his emotions, however, Callahan maintained a stiff upper lip. His team is 4-8 overall and 0-5 in Ivy play while Penn is 6-4 and 3-3.
“It’s great to celebrate these guys today,” he said. “Dartmouth sells itself, so I just told them to come get a degree at an unbelievable school and play lacrosse in the best conference in the country.
“We would have loved to get a win today and we didn’t.”
Notes: Dartmouth’s last victory over Penn occurred on April 21, 2012. … Columbia is the only Ivy League school not to have a men’s lacrosse team. … Dartmouth junior defenseman Andrew Johnston is the younger brother of former Big Green football tight end Stephen Johnston. … Callahan is 19-64 overall and 1-34 in Ivy play at Dartmouth since he arrived from Lehigh after seven years as a Mountain Hawks assistant.
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com.