The women’s basketball team dropped a pair of games over the weekend, losing to first-place Harvard 61-47 on Friday night before falling to Dartmouth 61-54 Saturday.
Junior Karen Force was again the bright spot for the Red (9-16, 3-9 Ivy), scoring a combined 41 points on the weekend. In addition, senior Lynell Davis scored 14 points with nine rebounds in Saturday night’s loss.
The Red entered Friday night’s game attempting to play spoiler in the Crimson’s (19-4, 11-0) run towards an undefeated conference slate. However, Harvard squelched any thoughts of that early on, as it limited the Red to one field goal over the first 14 minutes of the game to jump out to a 21-3 lead. Though the Red began to show signs of life thereafter, going on a 6-0 run to cut the Crimson lead to 12 at 21-9, to end the half with a 28-17 lead.
The Red got within as many as eight points with 8:40 remaining in the second before Harvard slammed the door, shooting 15-16 from the foul line over the game’s latter seven minutes. The Crimson lead by as many as 17 before holding on for the 61-43 win.
Dartmouth’s means of victory were vastly different than those of Harvard, despite the similar result. The lead changed hands 17 times before the Green (14-11, 8-4) went on a decisive run a little more than halfway into the second period to claim the 61-54 win.
In the first half, the Red shot 40 percent from the field as opposed to Dartmouth’s 30 percent. However, the Green headed into the break with a 26-23 lead.
The Red went on a 6-0 run early in the second to claim its first lead since late in the first.
Leading by just one with 10 minutes remaining in the half, the Red was able to stretch the lead to three on a layin by sophomore Sarah Lee before Dartmouth strung together an 8-0 run to take the lead for good at 45-40 with six minutes left.
Cornell got as close as 45-44 on a pair of lay-ups by Force and Davis before the Green went on another run, keyed by nine points by Katharine Hanks to extend the lead to 54-46 with slightly more than two minutes remaining.
For the game, Dartmouth shot 18-20 from the free-throw line.
In addition to Davis’ 14 points and a game-high 22 by Force, junior Lauren Kilduff chipped in seven points and eight rebounds.
Hanks led the Green with 15 points while Jean Cullen and Angela Soriaga added 14 and 12 respectively.
The Red will conclude its 2002-03 campaign next weekend when it hosts Princeton and Penn at Newman Arena. Both games get underway at 7 p.m.
Archived article by Owen Bochner