With a third place finish in the Ivy League last year, including season sweeps of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard and Yale, the Big Green surprised a lot of people.
How could a team starting two freshmen, two sophomores and a junior compete with veteran teams and even briefly challenge behemoths Penn and Princeton for the Ivy title?
The answer many reached was Head Coach Dave Faucher.
An excitable and animated figure on the bench, Faucher is more into a game than anybody. Friendly and well-spoken off the court, he talks openly about his philosophy on teamwork and his players' performances.
This season the Big Green stand with the same 4-8 record they did at the same time last year, before they went 10-4 the rest of the way. But this year they have already suffered two Ivy defeats -- and not at the hands of either Penn or Princeton.
In fact, other than a lone outburst in the second half at Loyola Marymount on Dec. 21, the Green have struggled on offense for over a month -- a problem they must correct as they begin the meat of the Ivy League schedule this weekend at Brown and Yale.
The Dartmouth sat down with coach Faucher to discuss the season to this point and the direction of the team for the rest of year.
Q: What is the effect of the two Ivy losses?
A: It's disappointing, there's no question. In every Ivy League game we realize the significance of it.
The Harvard games though are over and our season is still ahead of us. We're not even halfway through yet.
We have a big weekend trip at Brown and Yale that we're going to prepare for the best we can. And we just have to make sure that we play with our spirit, get our act together offensively so we can get some easier opportunities; play with confidence that when we are open, to shoot the ball, and continue the relentless effort we've shown recently defensively, especially since the holidays.
Q: What has been going on this week in practice?
A: Our whole emphasis is just trying to make all our decisions much much quicker than we made them in the Harvard game. We held the ball too long. We have to look for the low post or the open shot.
We became stagnant offensively and that's never happened to us. We've always moved and cut and screened and been able to solve our problems as they happen. For some reason there was major slippage in the Harvard game.
We have to realize that we're only going to be as strong as how well we work together. Individually we're a tough team and we have very competitive players and sometimes the competitiveness takes over and we try to do too much on our own. So the answer becomes, "I'll do more" when the answer is really needing to do less -- to do less individually and more within the team structure.
Q: You said last weekend you didn't make Harvard play more than the first pass?
A: If we're open we want to be able to play. We don't want to be timid. We want to be aggressive. The problem is that we stopped moving.
When we passed the ball it didn't have any zip on it. We have to pick up the pace. We have to pick up our energy level offensively. Maybe we're a little reluctant because we haven't shot the ball well, because things haven't gone our way, but we're just trying to get the energy back in our system so that we can break some people down.
Q: What is it that you expect from Yale and Brown?
A: Brown is much improved. I've just been watching tape of them and they play three freshman athletic kids plus a transfer point guard. So you're looking at an entirely different team that can shoot the ball.
They play well, they have a lot of energy. We have to beat the zone. They pose a lot of problems. It's definitely a challenge. It may be exactly what we need at this point.
Q: How disappointing was the Harvard loss?
A: We have a good program here and the Harvard game has always been very important to us and to everybody that goes to school here. Yeah that was a disappointing loss and it's particularly disappointing because they got the first one -- it's the first time in a long time that they got two from us.
I look at it through the eyes of the players, and the guys who worked hard and they have a lot of pride and they're good players. And for some reason it didn't work out and we didn't do the job we could have done and that's disappointing. I was hoping that the Harvard game would jumpstart us.
We just have to stick with it.
[Harvard] is just one game in the big picture. There's no question we haven't played as well as we would have liked, but every game has been a different thing.
We had great opportunities against three or four teams but we just didn't finish it. [Against] Harvard we struggled to get the opportunities but we played great defense. Another game we may have had it going but we had trouble stopping a team. We're having trouble putting it together at both ends. Every team is different. This team is a different team than it was a year ago. We're still searching to put it together.
Q: What happened at Loyola Marymount in the second half?
A: We just went off. It was just one of those halves. Loyola Marymount doesn't play great defense. They're not anywhere near the level of play of a Harvard or a Brown or teams in the Ivy League when you play an Ivy League game. We just got great looks and we just went nuts.
We scored 59 points in what was just an unbelievably explosive half. Unfortunately after the explosion we had to go home for Christmas and then come back and it wore off a little bit.
Q: How cohesive is the team?
A: I think we've really grown. I think until the holidays we were a bunch of guys and not a team. We're a team right now.
I think we're a team that appreciates each other. I think we're a team that is going to stay close together.
We'll go nowhere if people go in different directions. It's hard because there are a lot of outside influences and everybody becomes an expert. The game is so visible because it's on TV. Their parents will have ideas, their friends will have ideas, they'll have ideas. You start throwing this around and it becomes nothing more than a distraction to what we're trying to do.
