Crimson Hoopsters Fall to Big Green Attack, To Face Penn Saturday in Second Ivy Game

It's a well known basketball fact that a team can play the toughest defense known to man, but if it doesn't score, it won't win. And after losing, 61-45. Last night at Briggs Cage to Dartmouth's Big Green Scoring Machine, the Harvard women's basketball team won't forger that fact

The hoopsters played their usual solid defense, but could not hit a number of close-in shots that might have swung the game in the Crimson direction. "We should have won that game," Coach Kathy Delaney Smith remarked after the game. "I'm very disappointed that we didn't. We took a number of good shots that just didn't fall. If they had, the game would have been totally different."

Center Elaine Holpuch, whose power inside is usually incontested, was ice-cold on her inside shots Constantly out-muscled under the boards by Dartmouth's Jayne Diagle, Holpuch seldom got off a balanced lay up shot after rebounds. She hit only four of 17 shots. But certainly the rest of the squad was equally frigid from then floor--23 percent in the game. Only one other Crimson player tallied more than Holpuch's nine forward Cindy Clapp with 11 points, shooting at 33 percent.

Both teams played a slow-paced scoring game in the first 20 minutes; the score stayed relatively close, with the Crimson trailing by five at halftime.

But in the second half, Dartmouth started to use its height advantage inside more effectively. Big Green center Diagle and forward Sarah Frech ran a baseline back-door play which the Crimson had trouble defending. Frech would draw the defense out on her. Diagle then would cut behind Crimson defendes, take a quick lob pass, and go in for an easy layup. Diagle led all scores with 16 points, mainly from that play.

After Dartmouth had scored three of those baskets in a row, Smith encouraged centers Holpuch and Wendy Joseph to front Diagle on defense to cut off a possible lob pass, while guards Pat Horne and Anne Scannell waited behind her to slap the ball from her hands it the pass got through. That defensive ploy worked well, but playing defense has its costs. Both Horne and Scannell fould out in the last minutes of play.

The Crimson spent much of the game playing over the foul limit, and Dartmouth was hitting 50 percent at the line. Besides their inside advantage, the Big Green's guards could shoot well, and managed to total 25 points. Anne Deacon hit six jumpshots from a 20-ft, range, while teammate Kim Selmore connected on seven of 11 freethrows, plus outside shooting.

The Crimson hoopsters never gave up the battle against the Big Green, they just never provided any deadly ammunition to combat it.

In the last six minuted of play, the Crimson pulled to within six points, 48-42. The crowd and bench encouraged the hoopsters with "defense" cheers and the Crimson responded. But even after stealing the ball, the hoopsters often turned it back over to Dartmouth, or blew its late offensive chances at the foul line.

Dartmouth Coach Chris Wielgus commended the Crimson effort, "They never gave up. They managed to keep us out of our game plan the whole game. We have played much better than we did today."

Harvard's record fell to 2-2 with the loss.