HANOVER, N.H. – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team was unable to hold on to a 13-point second-half lead at Dartmouth on Saturday and fell to the Big Green, 75-71.
 
Penn led, 52-39, at the first media timeout of the second half and it felt like the Quakers might be able to pull away. Instead, the host Big Green—spurred on by a late-arriving but vocal student section—outscored the Red and Blue 12-2 over the next four minutes to get back in it, then made the plays down the stretch to get the win.
 
Penn fell for the seventh time in its last nine trips to Hanover and is 9-9 overall, 2-2 in Ivy League play; Dartmouth also is 2-2 in league play (one of four teams in the league with that mark) and improved to 6-12 overall.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Penn continued its torrid shooting from last Saturday at Columbia through the first half Saturday in Hanover (17-28, 60.8 percent); however, the Quakers cooled off considerably in the second half, going just 9-of-29 (31.0 percent) and missing all 13 of their three-point attempts.
 
*Penn lost despite tying a season low for turnovers against a Division 1 opponent this season, with seven.
 
*Junior Max Martz tied his career high with 22 points, originally set December 30, 2019 at Howard; he also led the Quakers with seven rebounds,
 
*Martz also matched his season high with four three-pointers; he originally did so November 25 against Hartford.
 
*Sophomore Nick Spinoso also had 22 points on Saturday, a season/career high; he grabbed five rebounds and dished out three assists.
 
*Junior Jordan Dingle saw his streak of 20-point games come to an end at 13 on Saturday, as he finished with 14 points; his double-figure scoring streak remains intact at 25, tied for the seventh-longest streak in program history with Jeff Neuman.
 
*Dingle also matched his season/career high with six assists—originally set December 10 against Temple—and grabbed six rebounds.
 
*Junior Clark Slajchert was held to single digits in the scoring column for the second straight game, with eight points, but he had five steals which is the most by a Penn player since Devon Goodman had five against Brown on February 9, 2020.
 
*Dartmouth was led by Ryan Cornish who scored 14 points on Saturday. Dame Adelekun stuffed the stat sheet with 12 points, six rebounds, two blocked shots and two assists while Brandon Mitchell-Day scored 10 points. Dusan Neskovic led the Big Green with seven rebounds to go with eight points.
 
How It Happened
Martz was the story early on, as he knocked down his first four three-point attempts. The fourth came just eight minutes in and pushed Penn in front, 21-14. Dartmouth responded with eight of the game's next 10 points, sandwiching treys from Jackson Munro and Romeo Myrthil around a Mitchell-Day bucket, to get within one at 23-22.
 
The Big Green took a 34-32 lead late in the first half when Munro drained another trey, but Slajchert and Dingle scored on consecutive possessions to set Penn off on a 9-0 run. The Quakers' lead was six at the half, 43-37.
 
Spinoso and Slajchert opened the second-half scoring to push Penn's lead to double digits, and after an Adelekun bucket Spinoso completed an and-1 three-point play and Dingle scored on a floater in the lane. At the first media timeout—actually, two in a row, a Dartmouth timeout followed almost immediately by a media—Penn's run was 9-2 and Dartmouth looked all out of sorts offensively.
 
Instead, it was Penn who went dry out of the second restart. The Quakers needed more than four minutes to get another field goal by Spinoso, and by that point the Big Green was within three and the crowd was starting to become a factor.
 
It would be more than two minutes later before Penn hit another shot, Dingle's turnaround making it 58-54, but Dartmouth scored the game's next four points and things were tied, 58-58, with seven minutes to play. The Quakers scored the next three, Spinoso hitting a foul shot and Martz draining a jumper, and then Spinoso followed a Dartmouth bucket with two more free throws. Dartmouth got one of the points back at the foul line, but Martz hit a baby hook and Penn's lead was 65-61 as the clock went inside five minutes.
 
A pair of Dingle foul shots gave Penn a 69-66 lead with 3:22 left, but Cornish leveled things again with a stone-cold trey. The Quakers then turned it over, and with a chance to take the lead Neskovic got to the line and made the second of two. That gave the Big Green its first lead of the half, 70-69, with 2:18 to play.
 
Martz was fouled early in Penn's next possession and hit both freebies to put the Quakers back in front, then Penn made a defensive stop and called a timeout. However, Slajchert put up a quick three that was off the mark, and instead Neskovic got in the lane and finished to put the Green in front, 72-71.
 
Slajchert was once again the offensive option as the clock went inside a minute, but Cornish blocked the ball from behind. Penn got a second chance and Slajchert again missed, but it looked like Martz would collect the rebound and convert the putback. Instead, Mitchell-Day blocked the shot and Adelekun got the rebound. Slajchert then fouled Cornish—fouling the junior out of the game—and Cornish hit both of his free throws to give Dartmouth a three-point lead with 26 seconds left.
 
Dingle missed a three, but George Smith skied over Cornish for the rebound and pushed it back out to Martz. He was about to pass it to an open Dingle, but instead the whistle blew and a Penn timeout was called. Out of the stoppage, Dingle got two more looks from beyond the arc but both were off the mark. Neskovic rebounded the last of those misses, got fouled, and hit the second of his shots to set the final score.
 
Up Next
Penn finally plays its first Ivy League home game of the 2022-23 Ivy League season on Monday, hosting travel partner and archrival Princeton at 7 p.m. In addition to going out to a national audience via ESPN+, Monday's game will air live locally on NBC Sports Philadelphia.