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Princeton University Athletics
Princeton University
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Dartmouth
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Dartmouth Pulls Ahead Early, Tops Women's Hoops 75-46
February 10, 2007 | Women's Basketball
HANOVER, N.H. -- Another first-half run broke open a tight game and led to a loss for the Princeton women's basketball team Saturday night at Dartmouth's Leede Arena as the Big Green won, 75-46.
It was the largest margin of defeat in the a series that Dartmouth has dominated, winning 39 of the 57 meetings. Dartmouth's previous biggest win was 27 points, 81-54, in 1989.
The loss deals another blow to Princeton's hopes of finishing the season atop the Ivy League standings. Harvard defeated Penn to improve to 6-1 at the league's halfway point, while Dartmouth moved into second place at 5-2.
The Tigers, at 4-3 in Ivy play and 10-11 overall, dropped to fourth in the Ivy League standings, two games back of Harvard, one back of Dartmouth and one-half back of Cornell.
Princeton finished the always difficult Harvard-Dartmouth road trip winless for the 14th time in 25 tries since the league went to the double round-robin format in 1983. Last year's sweep of the trip, the first ever, broke a six-year winless streak at the two schools.
The first half was a back-and-forth battle until Dartmouth went on a 10-0 run to take the lead for good. The run started when Dartmouth's Margaret Smith tied the game at 16-16 on a bucket with 6:46 to play and was capped by a pair of free throws from Sydney Scott at the 3:28 mark to take a 24-16 lead.
Friday night, Harvard broke a 6-6 tie with a 16-0 run from which the Tigers could not recover.
Princeton went 4:06 without scoring until Meagan Cowher hit one of two from the line to break the drought. Dartmouth's largest lead of the half came on a Koren Schram three-pointer as the final tenths ticked away for a 31-19 edge.
Dartmouth held Cowher to nine points, tying her season-low. Casey Lockwood led the Tigers with 12 as the only shooter in double figures.
Cowher increased her career points total to 1,037 as she remained in 16th place behind Allison Cahill (1999-03), who scored 1,058.
Princeton shot 28% in the first half, contrasted by Dartmouth's 40.7%.
The Big Green also outrebounded Princeton 21-16 and had fewer turnovers, 10-7.
A night after tying a season-high with 23 three-point attempts, making just five, Princeton continued firing from beyond the arc, again without much success. The Tigers were 1 for 7 from distance in the first half and finished the game 4 for 17.
An Ali Prichard three-pointer brought Princeton to within nine at 33-24 with 16:54 to play in the game, but that was the last time the Tigers had the deficit under 10. Dartmouth went on a 9-0 run to push the lead to 42-24 before Prichard ended the run with a pair of free throws 2:18 later.
Dartmouth's largest lead was 31 at 73-42 inside of three minutes to play after Fatima Kamara split a pair of free throws.
Princeton held Dartmouth's leading scorer, Ashley Taylor, scoreless in the first half, but the senior erupted for all of her team-high 19 points after the break. She was one of four Big Green players in double figures as Kristen Craft added 16 and Schram and Scott had 10 apiece. Scott added 10 boards for a double-double.
Princeton finished the night shooting 30.9% to Dartmouth's 51% and was outrebounded 41-29. Dartmouth held onto the turnover battle, 18-13.
Princeton will continue the road swing next weekend with games at Cornell Friday and Columbia Saturday, both 7 p.m. tips.