One of them is 16-1, number 11 in the country, winners of their last 18 Ivy League games. The other is 3-1 in the conference, winners of three of the last five Ivy automatic bids and has Michael Jordan as their starting point guard.
The Princeton Tigers and Pennsylvania Quakers come into Leede Arena with wonderful resumes, but, as of late, the Big Green have proved that they are going to make things tough for their visitors.
Dartmouth (6-12, 3-3 Ivy) has won its last three, a home win against perennial tournament-qualifier Navy and two road wins against fellow New Englanders Yale and Brown. But, Princeton and Penn are a far cry from Yale and Brown.
The Tigers are quite obviously the toughest team the Green will face all season. They come into the game at 4-0 in the Ivy League. But, their most impressive wins came against teams like Wake Forest and Texas.
Princeton has always been a fundamentally sound team, but they haven't had such sharpshooters since the days of Bill Bradley. The Big Green are going to have to stop 6' 11" center Steve Goodrich, who shoots the ball as well from downtown as anyone on their squad.
In their game against the Demon Deacons of Wake Forest, Goodrich and the Tigers opened by knocking down a ton of treys, which created many easy hoops on back-door plays late in the ballgame.
The Tigers are obviously heavy favorites and Dartmouth is going to need everyone to step up. Captain Asa Palmer '98 must step up defensively in order to play Goodrich, who is a very legitimate outside threat.
On the offensive end, Captain P. J. Halas '98 must continue his hot shooting. Halas broke his career high in scoring on two consecutive nights at Yale and Brown last weekend with totals of 25 and 27 points.
Halas will most definitely have to step up the following night against the Quakers, who will be led by the aforementioned Michael Jordan.
Jordan wears #23 but does not have a statue in Chicago erected in his honor. He does not play as well as his namesake, obviously, but was a preseason All-Ivy selection and could pose problems for the Big Green defense.
If the Big Green, currently tied for fourth, want to place themselves firmly in the upper echelon of the Ivy League, they are going to need to at least split this weekend's games.
On the positive side, both Princeton and Pennsylvania have struggled against weaker teams in recent weeks. The Tigers beat lowly Division III College of New Jersey by just nine points. Princeton put together several good runs but played like number 211 rather than number 11 at times.
Perhaps the key for the Big Green this weekend will be to turn the two games into a story of "The Tortoise and the Hare." If the Big Green play their consistent defense, and get hot offensively, they could cross the weekend finish line with a pair of wins.
