In the midst of a losing streak that was more than a month old, men's basketball coach Dave Faucher would have taken a win against a team that had to be wheeled onto the court.
He could not have dared to hope for a three-point win against a scholarship school to snap the team's 10-game losing streak on the road in a game televised on regional cable .
But that's exactly what he got.
Dartmouth squeaked by Boston University 73-70 on Tuesday night in Boston for its first win since Dec. 1 in a game shown throughout New England on Sports Channel.
"I hope I never have to go through something like this again," Faucher said of The Abominable Streak, the team's longest since 1980. "It felt so good to get a win and the fact that it was a quality opponent at their place just made it even better."
In a season where just about everything had been going wrong, Dartmouth finally had a night in which just about everything went right, from timely runs and solid defense to clutch free throws and red-hot shooting.
BU led by as much as 11 in the early going and held a seven-point halftime edge before Dartmouth ripped out an 11-2 run early in the second half to take its first lead of the game.
The Big Green kept that lead through most of the half, shooting 59 percent from the floor while playing good enough defense to hold BU to 34 percent.
More importantly, the team's problem with butterfingeritis - that nasty propensity to turn the ball over an embarassing number of times - vanished. Dartmouth turned the ball over only three times in the entire half.
Still, Dartmouth's lead never went beyond six points, and the Terriers kept clawing at the door. With just under three minutes to play, Dave Stiff loosened up the rim with a dunk that gave BU a two-point advantage.
Thirty seconds later, Sea Lonergan '97 had the most important three points of his 15 on the night as he swished a three-pointer to give Dartmouth the lead.
Baskets by Gregg Frame '94, Jamie Halligan '94 and Stan Kowaleski, who finished with 19, 16 and 10 points respectively, were matched by a pair of treys from BU's Dave Wallace and Triomain Byrd to keep Dartmouth's lead at one.
BU fouled Frame with 7.3 seconds remaining, but the senior captain calmy canned both his foul shots to insure the Dartmouth victory.
