Coming off losses to the Ivy League's top two teams in Hanover, the Dartmouth men's basketball team (8-17, 4-8) will face the third- and last-place teams this weekend in New York State.
Tomorrow night the Big Green will battle to stay out of the Ancient Eight cellar when they take on Cornell (10-15, 3-9). The Big Red, like the Green, were expected to finish near the top of the standings before the year began, but instead have struggled to win at all.
Until winning twice at home last weekend, the Big Red had only garnered a single League victory. Now, while Cornell is hardly playing brilliantly, it will have much more confidence this weekend than it would have had the Green gone to Ithaca last Friday.
This coming Saturday night, Dartmouth will find itself in New York City to battle upstart Columbia (12-13, 6-6), which has taken over third place by its lonesome after a two-win weekend against Yale and Brown.
The Lions' success is so remarkable because the team starts all young players and even has a sophomore captain. But that captain, swingman Craig Austin, leads the team in scoring with 14.5 points per game, assists with 2.4 per game, steals and blocked shots.
In this final weekend of the season, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth and the other three Ivy schools who are not Penn and Princeton will be battling for position in the League's final standings below the Big Two. Dartmouth currently stands tied for sixth with Brown, but could finish as high as third and as low as eighth.
The Quakers hold a two-game lead over the Tigers, but both squads have three remaining games, including the last on the Ivy schedule, against each other, next Tuesday.
The Big Green will just play for confidence going into next year.
Cornell
After a fourth-place finish in the Ivy League last year, and returning talented sophomore point guard Wallace Prather as well as tough junior forward Ray Mercedes, Cornell seemed a lock to at least repeat its standing from a year ago. But now the Big Red will need to win both of its games -- they play Harvard Saturday night at home -- and hope for losses by all of the teams above it just to tie for fourth.
Currently, Cornell sits alone in last place.
Prather, who along with Dartmouth's Flinder Boyd '02 are the best Ivy League point guards of their year, has not improved as quickly as Boyd has in running an offense. Prather averages 13.2 points per game but only dishes three assists for every two turnovers.
Defensively, he gathers less than half a steal per game.
Mercedes' play has also leveled off from last year. He improved his scoring to 15.0 points per game from 14.2 in 1998-99 and 12.4 the year before. His six rebounds a game is only .5 more than last season's average.
A trio of frontcourtmen supplement Cornell's stars, but have all performed inconsistently this season.
Senior forward Derek Kruse, who averages 6.1 points a game and 3.6 rebounds, broke out last weekend to average 23.5 points and 12.5 boards over the two contests.
Similarly, senior forward/center Keirian Brown led Cornell's offense during several games earlier in the year, but has since disappeared down the stat sheet.
Junior 6'9" forward Greg Barratt, a transfer from Utah, often scores in double figures, but he has had some very poor games as well.
Freshman swingman David Muller and junior shooting guard Kevin Cuttica are the only other Cornell players who see significant playing time. Neither of them ranks as a standout.
In Hanover on Sat. Feb 5, the Big Red fell to Dartmouth 73-66 in a tight ballgame. Cornell led by four at halftime and shot 52 percent to the Big Green's 43 percent for the game, but Dartmouth gutted out the victory, which included a 27-point night from Greg Buth '01.
Columbia
Sophomores Austin, guard Victor Munoz, guard Derrick Mayo, power forward Joe Case, center Mike McBrien and junior guard Treg Duerksen have led the Lions to a .500 record and a good chance to improve upon it this weekend. Freshman center Chris Wiedmann has also begun to appear among his team's single-game leaders in points and rebounds.
On Feb. 4, Dartmouth held Austin to 0-9 from the floor for four points. However, the Lions kept Buth to five-for-13 shooting for only 13 points and Shaun Gee '00 to a six-for-15 night.
The Big Green defended better and played with more intensity in a 52-46 win.
The Big Green match up well against the Lions, who rarely play their only true center in Wiedmann. Without a presence in the middle, center Ian McGinnis '01 and Gee were both able to grab nine rebounds in the teams' first contest this year.
Despite their difficulties, the Lions have managed to win two more Ivy games than the Green, and must be taken seriously.
Fallout
Even if Dartmouth loses both games, they are unlikely to finish alone in last place. Brown, which is currently 4-8 in the Ivies as well, faces Penn and Princeton away, and will almost certainly lose both. Cornell also is unlikely to knock off Dartmouth and Harvard on consecutive nights as they did last weekend against Brown and Yale.
Basically the worst-case scenario for the Big Green is a tie for sixth of seventh place, which might also constitute the bottom of the Ivy League.
If Dartmouth wins both games, it is possible they could finish tied for third with Columbia, but that assumes a Lion loss to Harvard on Friday night. Much as Cornell is unlikely to beat both Dartmouth and Harvard, Columbia is unlikely to lose to both of them.
So the more likely outcome has the Green finishing in fourth place, either tied or all alone.
If the Big Green split the games, they may finish anywhere between fourth and seventh. Only time will tell.
