Battling to the Final Minute

Hi All,

Well, after a very tough weekend against Princeton and Penn, I must admit I was unsure what would happen during our Tuesday night game at Harvard. It's rare that the final game of the entire Ivy League season between the two rivals does not have Ivy title or at least postseason implications. The Crimson had already clinched its bid to the Women's NIT as the League's second-best team.

It was really a unique game of runs! Mostly, Harvard going on a run and us answering back. A first-half run gave the Crimson a 13-point lead and we battled back, but Harvard still led by 10 at halftime. But our team never caved. In the second half, it continued to be runs - but six seemed to be the magic number, on two different occasions we cut the lead down to six after Harvard had extended the lead to more than 10 points.

After two huge threes gave Harvard a 62-51 lead with three minutes to play, I must admit, even I was not optimistic. But I should have been, given the way Faziah Steen and Betsy Williams were shooting the ball! The two of them went on an 8-0 run to pull us within just three points with 1:12 to play. Harvard hit two at the line on its next possession to go up five, and we could not score on our next. The Crimson actually missed the front end of a one-and-one on two occasions, but we again struggled to get a good look at the basket and never made up the 64-59 difference.

It was tough to swallow that loss after we battled back all game. We played a great second half, but again, the story of trailing at halftime came to bite us again. Betsy was really tremendous in her final game in a Dartmouth uniform and as I told her, other than winning, there is no better way to go out. She scored 16 points and was 4-of-4 from three-point range. She ranks 14th all-time with 60 career threes. And Faziah had the best game of her freshman year, scoring 23 points, grabbing seven boards (on a court with a lot of big players), and dishing out four assists. She hit threes, jumpers, layups and free throws and shot 64 percent from the field. It was a great way to end her first season.

We'll have All-Ivy news up later today and some more thoughts in the next few days.

Also want to give a shout out and thank you to our amazing alumnae, who supported this team all over the country this season. There's been a great resurgence and it's impacting the program tremendously. A few were on hand after the Penn game to congratulate Coach Wielgus on her 25th season at Dartmouth, they gave her an amazing picture/memory book and helped welcome our seniors to their alumnae family at our postgame senior night reception.

Thanks again for everyone's support this year!

- Dara