Winter carnival will be sweeter if Dartmouth is able to catch a streaking Quaker and bag itself a Tiger.
This weekend the Big Green men's basketball team plays host to Penn and Princeton in a pair of Ivy League battles. At stake is the lead in the Ancient Eight as Penn comes to town in first place, with Dartmouth and Princeton tied for second.
"We're playing very well," said a focused Dartmouth Coach Dave Faucher in between looks at Penn scout films. "We just have to bring the toughness of the road into our own arena."
Dartmouth has been very tough on the road of late. They have won six of their last seven (75 percent on the road) including a two game sweep on the road at Brown and Yale last week.
Penn has a little streak of their own. The Quakers have tallied 48 consecutive conference victories in the Ivy League over the last three years. Two more and they will surpass the UCLA teams of the '70s which currently hold the nation's longest conference win streak.
"That streak is a real credit to the Penn program," Faucher said.
Penn's fast-paced offense boasts three of the Ivy's top five scorers. Dartmouth of course has the league's top scorer in Sea Lonergan '97. Both squads have deep benches and look for the Big Green to use about 10 to 11 players, up from their usual eight man rotation.
Saturday's match-up against the Princeton Tigers should be a more controlled game.
"We expect to get about 40 shots on Saturday," Faucher said. "They have a balanced attack and over half their shots are from three-point range."
Faucher wants to counter with sharpshooters so expect an eight to nine man rotation from Dartmouth to play most of the Big Green's minutes.
Both games should be wars with the bragging rights of the Ivies at stake. Penn's run-and-gun style, followed by the slow and deliberate game plan of Pete Carrill's Tigers, make a weekend like this a challenge for any staff to prepare for.
"They're so different [Penn and Princeton] we just have to concentrate on what we do best," Faucher said. "We've been practicing hard and the team is excited and ready to play."
Against the Quakers the Big Green has an even line, while they will be underdogs by about three points when Princeton visits.
But the Big Green have proven that does not matter, since the Big Green beat Harvard, Brown and Yale in away games as the underdog.
Could this weekend's match up between Penn or Princeton be Dartmouth's "game of the year?"
"This time of year in the Ivies, every game is the game of the year," Faucher said before he resumed watching game tapes.
The final 200 tickets to the Penn game will be on sale at Berry Sports Center beginning at 10:00 a.m.
