The Dartmouth athletic department may be handing out free towels to the first 100 students at Leede Arena this weekend, but it's not because anyone on the Big Green roster is sweating this weekend's matchups against Princeton and Pennsylvania. In a season where the Dartmouth roster contains only four upperclassmen, the Big Green may be short on experience, but despite a 6-15 record (2-6 Ivy League), Dartmouth isn't short on confidence. The young Big Green hoopsters proved this on their late January/early February trip to Penn and Princeton.
While Dartmouth's Jan. 31 trip to the Palestra was hardly a confidence booster -- defending Ivy tri-champion Penn took home a 73-50 win, with three Quakers scoring 14 points apiece -- the youthful Dartmouth squad was able to maintain its poise and bounce back for the team's Feb. 1 game against the Tigers at Jadwin Gymnasium.
Facing a defending Ivy tri-champion for the second time in two nights, Dartmouth was able to battle back from a 13-point deficit in the second half, and the game went into its last two minutes with the score tied at 49. While the Big Green's 36.4 percent shooting eventually doomed the team to a 57-52 loss, the young Dartmouth squad proved that it can play with the class of the Ivy League, gaining valuable confidence.
This weekend, the class of the Ivy (no team other than Penn or Princeton has represented the League in the NCAA Tournament since Cornell in 1988) will visit Hanover, where the Tigers and Quakers will find a Dartmouth team whose confidence has only grown over the last three weeks.
"We're playing with more confidence than we were back then," said Dartmouth guard Steve Callahan '05, who led Dartmouth with 15 points against Princeton. Callahan, who missed the team's Feb. 7 loss to Yale with a groin injury, has scored in double figures in four of his last six games, including a team-high 11 points in Dartmouth's 63-49 win over Columbia last Saturday. With a scoring average of 9.1 points per game, Callahan is third on the team in scoring behind Dartmouth co-captain Charles Harris '02, who leads the team with 13 points and 4.9 rebounds per game, and backcourt mate Mike McLaren '05, who scores 9.5 points per contest.
"We had to go to their place," Callahan said of Princeton, "and we took them down to the wire. We're looking forward to them coming to our place." Leede Arena has been a friendly environment for the Big Green, as four of Dartmouth's six wins have come at home, including last weekend's sweep of Cornell and Columbia. However, with the League's perennial powerhouses en route to Hanover, Dartmouth may be hard pressed to hold home court.
The Tigers, who enter Friday's game with a 5-2 league record (10-9 overall), are desperately clinging to their Ivy championship hopes. With games against both Penn (15-5, 7-0 Ivy) and Brown (12-10, 7-1 Ivy) on the horizon, a loss to Dartmouth could eliminate Princeton from the Ivy title hunt.
If the Tigers hope to stay in the race by beating Dartmouth, though, they'll have to do so without the services of leading scorer Spencer Gloger (14.9 PPG). Gloger, who returned to the Tigers this season after transferring to UCLA, scored a game-high 16 points against Dartmouth on Feb. 1, and was also second on the team in rebounding before injuring his ankle in last Friday's loss to Brown. Late yesterday, Gloger's woes were compounded when Princeton announced that the junior forward has been ruled academically ineligible, and will be unable to play the remainder of the season.
However, while Princeton will be forced to play without Gloger, the team will have the services of sophomore guard Will Venable, who sat out the Feb. 1 Dartmouth-Princeton game. Since junior forward Andre Logan was injured during Princeton's Nov. 30 game against Florida International, Venable has been the Tigers' second leading scorer behind Gloger, averaging 11 points per game.
According to Big Green head coach Dave Faucher, it's "hard to know" how a Gloger-less Princeton will compare to the Venable-free Tigers that Dartmouth faced at the beginning of the month. "Venable's having a great year," said Faucher, adding that "he's a tough matchup for everyone in the League." Faucher also pointed out that the Tigers will still have senior forward Ray Robins, who scored 14 points in Princeton's earlier victory over the Big Green.
Furthermore, according to Faucher, "You can't draw from the first game. It was well played, we had a shot at it, but they found a way to win." Faucher added that "every game has its own identity," and that what happened at Princeton doesn't affect what will take place in Leede Arena tonight.
Faucher is much clearer about tomorrow night's game with the league-leading Quakers, which will be televised on the YES network. "There's only one way to look at this game," Faucher said, "and that's as a great opportunity for Dartmouth." Penn's spotless Ivy record and earlier 23-point victory over the Big Green make the Quakers a heavy favorite going into the game. However, at the beginning of January, Dartmouth was able to turn a 17-point blowout at Harvard into a one-point near miss when the Crimson visited Leede Arena. By the same token, the Big Green will be looking to maximize home-court advantage against the Quakers.
Penn is led by reigning Ivy Player of the Year Ugonna Onyekwe, whose 15.9 points and 7.1 rebounds per contest lead the Quakers in both categories. Fellow All-Ivy First Teamer Koko Archibong joins Onyekwe in the Penn frontcourt, averaging 10.3 points and 4.6 rebounds per game. The Quakers' dynamic duo may pose problems for a Dartmouth squad that generally puts one post player on the floor at a time.
Faucher is quick to acknowledge that Penn has "a lot of quickness, and a lot of strength in the interior," but also points out that the Quakers have the best three-point shooting percentage in the Ivy, connecting on 40.1 percent of their long-distance shots. Three of the Ancient Eight's top six long-range gunners are Quakers: guards Jeff Schiffner, Tim Begley and First Team All-Ivy selection Andy Toole, who is also Penn's second-leading scorer, with 11.6 points per game.
Despite Penn's impressive array of talent, Faucher feels that his team is in control heading into the Big Green's YES Network debut. "We control how hard we play, how hard we cut, and how hard we screen," Faucher said. "Our energy and our effort have to neutralize their talent base."
With four players averaging in double figures (Schiffner is third on the Quakers with 10.9 points per contest), the Quakers have a difficult talent base to neutralize. However, as the young Dartmouth team continues to improve, "energy" and "effort" shouldn't be hard to come by as the Big Green prepares to take on the "killer Ps."
