Saturday, March 07, 2015

Easing Back Into It

We finally made it back to the Upper Valley last night, too late to head into town for some thoroughly exciting Dartmouth action.

The men's ice hockey team used a goal with 1:27 remaining to knock off Princeton in its ECAC playoff opener, 3-2. The Big Green (16-10-4) and Tigers (4-22-3) play the second game in the best-of-three series tonight at Thompson Arena.

Across the street and up the road the Dartmouth men's basketball team erased a 24-point, second-half deficit to post a 75-69 win over Brown. With the win the Big Green improved to 13-14 overall and 6-7 in the Ivy League. Dartmouth is guaranteed to finish no lower than fourth in the Ivy League regardless of what happens in tonight's finale against Yale while a win would make the team eligible to perhaps advance to the postseason for the first time since 1959 should one of the alphabet-soup tournaments come calling.

Not to be outdone, the Dartmouth women's basketball team posted a 71-53 win at Brown to improve to 14-13 overall and 5-8 in the Ivy League. The Big Green will close out against Yale tonight.
Lots of news while BGA was away including the sad news that former corner Don Smith '74 passed away. The Seattle Times had an obit about the former Big Green player who came to be known as "Pops," and was called a "mentor to African-American youths."

Don and identical twin Ron came out of Seattle and started opposite each other on the '72 Ivy League champions. Ron died in 2012 as reported in the Dartmouth.

A funny rumor about the twins was that in one game they switched jerseys and play each other's position. Whether that actually happened is uncertain but teammates say they did do it in practice.
Here's where we spent most of the past 10 days, about a half hour north of San Diego . . .

The accommodations were modest but the price was right, and as they say in real estate, it's location, location, location that matters.
That's our castle atop the cliff.
It was a gorgeous sunset and then Scrabble most nights.