NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Two teams intent on building their identity around defense collided Saturday afternoon at Lee Amphitheater as the Yale women's basketball team hosted Dartmouth. With points at a premium, the Bulldogs wound up stringing together a 6-3 run in the final 2:39 to pull out a 48-46 win over the Big Green.
Yale (4-13, 1-3 Ivy League) committed only nine turnovers – tied for its third-lowest total of the season. Dartmouth committed 14, and those extra Bulldog possessions proved critical in a game where neither team shot better than 40 percent from the field.
"It was a defensive battle for sure," said
Dalila Eshe, Yale's Joel E. Smilow, Class of 1954 Head Coach of Women's Basketball. "[Dartmouth coach Linda Cimino] has done an excellent job in her first year. They are methodical and very well-disciplined. This was a good game to test our defensive principles, and our team rose to the occasion."
Yale led 28-26 at the half, but Dartmouth (6-10, 0-4 Ivy League) outscored the Bulldogs 9-6 in the third and took a 35-34 lead into the final quarter. The lead then changed hands a pair of times before senior guard
Jenna Clark hit a critical three with 4:09 to play, giving Yale a 42-40 advantage.
Clark again came up big just over 90 seconds later, hitting another three. That one put Yale ahead 45-43 with 2:34 to play.
While the Bulldogs would not relinquish the lead, neither would Dartmouth go quietly. The Big Green missed three chances to tie or take the lead in a span of 52 seconds, including a shot that was blocked emphatically by sophomore guard
Kiley Capstraw.
Dartmouth was eventually forced to foul, and Capstraw went to the line with nine seconds left to sink two free throws. That enabled Yale to withstand a late three by Dartmouth's Victoria Page. After Clark made a free throw to get the score to 48-46, Dartmouth had a chance to tie but missed a jumper at the buzzer.
Notes:
- Yale has now won seven in a row in the series vs. Dartmouth.
- Capstraw and Clark tied for the game lead in points (16), and they remain neck-and-neck atop Yale's scoring leaders list for the season. Clark leads the team, averaging 14.1 points per game, with Capstraw second at 13.3 points per game.
- Senior forward Brenna McDonald led Yale with seven rebounds.
- The game featured 14 lead changes.
Quotes from Coach Eshe:
- On what it took to prevail in a close game: "We stayed engaged throughout the entire game, across the board."
- On facing a Dartmouth team that featured one starter who is 6-foot-4 (forward Doreen Ariik) and another who is 6-foot-3 (forward Clare Meyer): "In most games we think we have the advantage [starting two players who are 6-foot-3, senior forward Brenna McDonald and junior forward Grace Thybulle]. Coming into a game where we went head-to-head with two other players that tall, it was fun for our bigs to see. I thought we did a good job, holding them to nine [points for Meyer] and six [points for Ariik]. But their guards did an excellent job as well."
- On what this win – Yale's first Ivy League win – could mean for the rest of the season, starting with a game vs. Harvard next Saturday: "Our narrative is, we've been saving the good stuff. Any way you can come up with a win works. This gives us a chance to find some confidence."
Other Ivy League Scores:
- Brown 64, Cornell 53
- Harvard 69, Penn 56
- Columbia at Princeton, 4:00 p.m.
Up Next:
- Yale hosts Harvard Saturday Jan. 27 at 1:00 p.m.
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