"Fifty years. That's all you need to know."
Those were the words of Dartmouth men's basketball captain Jarrett Mathis '09 when I posed the question to him that my editors asked me to ttake on in this column. Indeed, maybe it is all you need to know when deciding what athletic event to attend this weekend. After sweeping its contests last weekend, our beloved Big Green sits at second place in the Ivy League standings, and within a stone's throw of a conference championship. The Ivy League, of course, does not hold a conference basketball tournament (which I have already written about extensively), and therefore the conference champion gets an automatic bid to March's big dance -- the NCAA tournament.
The last time Dartmouth won the Ivy League championship was 1959, and it then lost in the opening round of the NCAA tournament to the University of West Virginia. The year before, however, in 1958, Dartmouth beat traditional powerhouse the University of Connecticut (and Manhattan College) before losing to Temple University in the Elite Eight. This column is not a history lesson in the glory days of Dartmouth basketball, but in order to truly appreciate what (knock on wood) could happen this weekend, we need to understand just how rarely these opportunities come about.
Jordan will tell you all to go to the Dartmouth men's hockey game, and if you do, you surely won't be disappointed. The Big Green skaters have long been an ECAC powerhouse, and will frequently play competitive games against top-notch opponents. This is exactly the reason, however, that you should choose to go to the basketball game. Important hockey games are a dime a dozen in Hanover, but a basketball game of this magnitude has not been played in the "603-646" in well, 50 years.
This article is not supposed to argue which team is better, or argue which sport I like more or anything like that. The point is simply to debate which game Dartmouth students "should" go see. Let's go support a program that has been down on its luck the last few years and regularly competes in a conference that has been absolutely ruled by three powers (Cornell, Penn, Princeton) for the last 20 years. Let's go out and watch a team put it all on the line for a spot in the national limelight -- the games that all basketball players grow up wanting to play. The NCAA tournament is the biggest playoff in all of college sports, and simply making the field of 64 would put Dartmouth on the national map in a way that would bury admissions office employees in envelopes (remember when George Mason made the Final Four? Applications to the school increased by 20 percent the next year, and campus tour sizes tripled!)
A trip to the NCAA tournament would not only increase Dartmouth's national appeal, but also help out the entire athletic department. Every team at Dartmouth would benefit from the basketball team's success, because the visibility of the athletic department would be so dramatically increased. Premier high school athletes who intend to go to school at Dartmouth often play multiple sports and follow all sorts of college sports. Simply seeing the name "Dartmouth" on thousands of brackets on the television and over the Internet does more for publicity than a hundred sport-specific recruiters.
Even if you don't want to go watch the basketball game for the history of it all, or for the "good of the College," then at least go for this reason: it will be one hell of a game. The team is really playing with a sense of purpose, and even if the Big Green does not make the tournament, it is worth it to see the graduating seniors play in their last games at home. These seniors -- Alex Barnett '09, Jarrett Mathis '09, Dan Biber '09, Marlon Sanders '09 and Kurt Graeber '09 -- should be honored for seeing the Dartmouth basketball program through some of its darkest hours early in their careers, to maybe playing in the most important games the recent history of the program.
The only way Dartmouth sports fans can go wrong this weekend is not to go to either game. That being said, it has been 50 years, and that's all you should need to know.
