The women's basketball team stormed back from a 10-point halftime deficit to beat Brown 77-65 Saturday night and retain sole possession of first place in the Ivy League.
The victory followed a 71-47 blowout over Yale on Friday night, giving the team a rare road sweep and a five-game winning streak heading into four League games at home in the next two weekends.
Dartmouth 77, Brown 65
Brown jumped out early on the Big Green, running up a 12-6 lead after five minutes and extending it to 42-32 by the intermission.
Both teams shot well, hitting half their shots or better, but Dartmouth played passively and got beat on the boards.
"They got a lot of put-backs in the first half," Ilsa Webeck '94 said.
At times Dartmouth applied a full-court press in the first half, but the Bears easily beat it.
"At halftime it looked like we were playing scared and afraid of losing, rather than playing to win," Brandi Jones '95 said.
Webeck said "[at halftime] we were trying to figure out what was going wrong, we all decided it was our defensive intensity."
The Big Green headed into the intermission needing a change, and Coach Chris Wielgus decided to apply the full-court press again. This time it worked.
Dartmouth exploded out of the locker room with a 25-8 run to erase the deficit and open up a 59-50 lead with 11:14 to play.
Webeck scored seven points and Jones drained a three pointer before the stunned Bears put their first points of the second half on the board.
Jones was on fire, draining five three-pointers in the second half to tie the school record.
"It's been a long time coming," Jones said. "I didn't think about it very much. My teammates were setting me up so it gave me a little bit of room. When you have room and you're a set shooter, it definitely helps"
After opening up the nine-point lead, the Big Green never looked back, and the Bears never woke up. Brown could not get closer than nine points in the game's final 10 minutes.
The press "rattled them and it just got the momentum going our way," Jones said. "As long as our defense is flowing for us our offense usually comes."
Jones led the team with 21 points. Sally Annis '97 added 17. Webeck notched 14 points and pulled down 6 rebounds.
Dartmouth 71, Yale 47
Yale managed to stick with the Big Green for 10 minutes of Friday night's game in New Haven. But that was as good as it got for Yale as Dartmouth outshot, out-rebounded and generally outplayed the overmatched Bulldogs.
With a little more than 10 minutes remaining in the first half, Dartmouth trailed 15-14 and Yale had dreams of an upset. But it was not to be.
Annis stuck in her own rebound to give Dartmouth a 16-15 lead, one that the team would not relinquish.
Annis' shot sparked a 10-0 run in which Annis, Gilmore and Webeck put on a clinic of scoring in the paint. Dartmouth took a 33-23 advantage into the locker room.
The second half played out much like the first, as Yale hung within 12 or 13 for a while before collapsing, bottoming out when Dartmouth led 71-42 with a minute to play.
