M. Hoops | Alex Barnett leads Dartmouth past Penn - again

The year was 1959. Dwight Eisenhower was president, Hawaii and Alaska were new states in the union and CBS' The Twilight Zone had just become a primetime staple in suburban living rooms everywhere.

That year was also the last time that the Dartmouth men's basketball team swept Penn. Friday night, the Big Green upended the fifty-year curse in Philadelphia, defeating the Quakers for the second time this season, 69-59.

And if you ask anyone in the Palestra, it sure as hell felt like a night in the Twilight Zone.

The Quakers (8-15, 4-5 Ivy) looked like they had been caught in a time warp as the Big Green showed Penn what maturity meant from the get-go. Senior star Alex Barnett's game-starting three-pointer sent a message to the Quakers that they'd be hearing for the rest of the game:

Catch me if you can, kids.

Penn scored only two field goals in the first five and a half minutes of play as Dartmouth (8-14, 6-4 Ivy) took advantage of Penn's messy transition to glide to a 13-4 lead at the 14:30 mark.

Quakers coach Glen Miller avoided the perimeter in the outset, calling plays that dumped the ball to the Quakers' big guys. Senior center Cam Lewis started off strong, opening Penn's scoring with a layup, notching one block and drawing a foul then making good on both attempts within the game's first 12 minutes.

His three turnovers in the first half, though, were a huge factor in taking the wind out of the Quakers' sails.

Lewis wasn't Penn's sole perpetrator. Guards Zack Rosen and Harrison Gaines missed relatively uncontested layups in the first five minutes and after racking up two fouls early on, Tyler Bernardini rode the bench for the last 13 minutes of the half.

"I think any offense would love to get the ball as close to the basket as we did," Miller said. "We missed a lot of layups . [We] have to finish more than we did."

At moments in the second half, though, Penn showed signs that it was the same team that rallied to beat Princeton Tuesday night. Sophomore Jack Eggleston injected momentum into his team with a three-pointer with five minutes left. Bernardini followed up with a jumper to bring the score within three before Dartmouth's David Rufful answered with a trey of his own to keep the deficit at six.

The Quakers never recovered, even though Zack Rosen stepped up in the second stanza with nine points and four assists (overall, he scored 15 points while notching five assists). The game became stop-and-go in the ultimate minute, as the Quakers were forced to foul, sending Barnett to the line to make the six straight free throws that sealed Penn's fate.

With support from Elgin Fitzgerald (10 points) and Rufful (11), Barnett tallied his game-high 20 points from all over, completing everything from 26-foot threes to seemingly-effortless fadeaways. He finished just shy of a double-double with nine rebounds and also blocked four shots.

"I thought [Barnett] was tremendous," Dartmouth coach Terry Dunn said. "As a matter of fact, I had to drag him off the bench . If I can get him in with 10 minutes of rest on a Friday . [that's] huge."

The Quakers, not Barnett, though, may have ultimately been their own worst enemy.

"Overall, we didn't have any heart tonight," senior forward Kevin Egee said. "When we got in the post, we just had turnover after turnover, and you can't expect to win that way."

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.