Having played three consecutive Ivy League games to start 2002, the Dartmouth men's basketball team (6-9) welcomes the Great Danes of SUNY-Albany (3-11) to Leede Arena tonight for a non-conference match-up.
Albany comes into tonight's game fresh off a last-second victory over in-state rival Columbia on Tuesday evening. The victory marked the first home win of the year for the Great Danes, but now they must face another Ivy League opponent on the road in Hanover.
Albany is led by 6-5 senior forward Will Brand, who has scored over 1,200 points and grabbed over 600 rebounds in his four-year career. Brand has put up an average of 10.5 points and 6.1 rebounds per game this season.
Dartmouth head coach Dave Faucher had high praise for Brand and his ability to play both the small and the power forward positions.
Brand "poses a legitimate match-up problem for us because he's huge for a three [small forward]," Faucher said. "He's also tough even if they play him at the four because he's bigger and stronger than Charles [Harris '02] is."
Despite the problems that Will Brand may pose for Big Green defenders, Coach Faucher is looking forward to his team breaking out of its recent four-game slide.
"We think [Albany] is a big game for us because we have done fairly well out of conference [this season]," Faucher remarked. "We need to play well against a very athletic team to give us back our confidence and jump start us in league play when it begins again in a couple of weeks."
Leading the way for Dartmouth tonight will be senior point guard Flinder Boyd. The native of Los Angeles has been on fire of late, averaging 22 points and shooting 64 percent from the field in last weekend's losses to Penn and Princeton.
For the season Boyd has averaged 16 points and 3.8 assists per contest while leading the Ivy League in three-point field goal shooting at 58.3 percent.
Albany and Dartmouth met twice last season with the Big Green claiming victories in both games. In the second match-up last year at Leede Arena Dartmouth set a school record with 18 three-pointers on its way to an 88-76 win. Greg Buth '01 made 9 of 13 shots from beyond the arc that day to lead all scorers with 33 points.
With the departure of Buth, though, Dartmouth might not set another school record for number of three-point shots made tonight. But that won't stop Mike McLaren '05 from hoisting up his share of shots from downtown. McLaren leads the team with 32 three-point field goals made on the year.
Tip-off time for Big Green troops is at 7 p.m. tonight.
