Quick Turnaround and Back on the Road

Hi All,

Sitting in a hotel room in Worcester, Mass. with some time to kill before dinner and thought I'd give a quick update on things. We're at my old stomping grounds to take on Holy Cross tomorrow (Saturday Jan. 2) at 1 p.m. I graduated from Holy Cross in 2004, where I was an athlete and worked for the athletic department. I'm glad we've kept up our series with HC because it's a good measuring stick for us and is a great battle between two traditional New England powers. And people always ask me if I am torn - the answer is of course not! Dartmouth is who I am now and it's Go Big Green all the way! All the usual preview and multimedia info can be found here.

We're looking to turn things around tomorrow as we were unable to get a W at our own Blue Sky Classic, but there were some positives to come out of the tournament. We took a really tough 58-57 loss to Rhode Island in the opener. URI came out on fire and led us, 21-5, in the first seven minutes! We battled back, but they still held a 12-point lead at the half, that they quickly built back to 16 early in the second. Then we finally got our rhythm going, got the ball inside to Brittney and got some big threes to fall. Betsy Williams hit a particularly huge shot to pull us within two points late in the game. We were down 58-57 with a chance to win on the last possession, but things didn't go our way and we couldn't complete the comeback.

That loss seemed to really stir something in the players, however, and they came out with a rejuvenated determination the next day! The team had a great shootaround and just the players stayed longer to work on some more stuff. That competitiveness showed when we took on Dayton, who was just outside the top-25 in both polls this week (essentially #27 nationally). Dayton has ranked as high as 20th this year. The game opened as a real defensive struggle, knotted at 0-0 until Dayton scored at 16:21. It was just 7-5 eight minutes into the game. We trailed by eight at halftime and Dayton managed to pull away in the second and added to the total with a late press. We lost, 57-36, but it was a closer game than that and our defense battled against a much taller and deeper team. There were a lot of positives to take out of it.

Hope everyone has a healthy and happy new year and we are excited to share the Ivy season with all of you!

- Dara