Josie Harper stood at the front of the Hanover Inn's Wheelock Room, quietly surveying the restless mixture of reporters, coaches and athletes that sat before her. The director of Dartmouth athletics gathered herself, thanked her audience for coming and then facetiously mused:
"How can it be Dunn, but we've not yet started?"
And with that awkward pun, the Terry Dunn era began.
Since the resignation of Dave Faucher last February, the Dartmouth basketball program has searched for a replacement capable of leading the Big Green back to respectability and stopping its current 18-game losing streak. Over 100 applications were submitted. In the end, the list narrowed to four finalists: University of Pennsylvania assistant coach Gil Jackson, George Washington University assistant coach Steve Pikiell, Williams College coach Dave Paulsen and University of Colorado assistant Terry Dunn. Paulsen, two-time defending NCAA Division III Coach of the Year, later removed himself from the running.
Whether the Williams coach would have ultimately gotten the job, one may only speculate. Regardless, on Thursday at 7:30 p.m., 51-year-old Terry Dunn was officially introduced as the 26th men's basketball head coach in Dartmouth history.
"I love the maturity. I love the stability. I love the enthusiasm and the new direction he's going to take our basketball team," Harper said, applauding Dartmouth's new pick.
Dunn's journey to Hanover started in Colorado Springs as the head coach at Harrison High School from 1982 to 1989. He broke into the collegiate ranks when he took an assistant coach position at the West Point. Two years later, Dunn returned to Colorado Springs, this time at the Air Force Academy. There, he worked under former Dartmouth coach Reggie Minton. Three seasons with the Falcons were followed by two at Colorado State.
In 1996, Dunn was hired at the University of Colorado, where he has worked until now. As a Buffalo assistant, Dunn was responsible for the coordination of off-campus recruiting and scouting and working with the CU post-players. His experience with big men will most likely lead to a renovated offensive attack, shifting attention away from the three-point line to the paint.
"I'd like to see big Dave Gardner probably touch the basketball 15 to 20 times down on the block," Dunn announced. "I'd like to see the mid-range games from our perimeter guys improve."
Physically, Terry Dunn is the antithesis of the man he has been hired to replace. Small and tough, Dave Faucher runs marathons for fun, golfs and screams orders in a thick New England accent.
Dunn, however, is a three-year letter winner in both basketball and track at the University of Northern Colorado. He stands tall, stretches wide and wields a booming voice. When women's basketball head coach Chris Wielgus presented her newest colleague with a Dartmouth T-shirt, she wondered out loud if an extra large would be large enough.
Of course, different body types do not mean different results, but different attitudes do. At his press conference, Dunn took several occasions to stress the hard-nosed man-to-man defense that he expects the Big Green to play.
Indeed, described by Colorado head coach Ricardo Patton as "our drill guy on the staff," Dunn brings an air of no-nonsense intensity that he said will translate into wins.
When asked about the daunting task of breaking Princeton and Penn's stranglehold over Ivy League basketball, Dunn made his feelings explicitly clear.
"Our goal is none other than to win an Ivy League title," he said.
