A brief side note -- what in the name of common sense was with the halftime entertainment on Saturday night? I find the idea of throwing dollar bills onto the court, blindfolding somebody, making them spin around a bat several times and then get on their hands and knees to pick up as much cash before the horn sounds to be degrading and slightly offensive. Does the athletic department know that the United States is in a recession and has the highest unemployment rate this nation has seen in 30 years? Come on, people.
Dartmouth men's basketball is now third place in the Ancient Eight standings, behind first-place Princeton (4-0 Ivy) and last year's champion Cornell (5-1 Ivy). With a big New York road trip next weekend, the Big Green could well be in second place before it heads to Princeton in two weeks.
Knapp is of course eating this stuff up, since, at heart, he's a basketball guy trapped in a rower's body. In fact, he's still having trouble giving up his high school glory days. I can't tell you the amount of times I've heard him describe his impeccable low-post abilities against futile competition from Marshfield. Every time he and I watch a game on TV involving UConn, he says, "Jordo! I played Jeff Adrien in high school!"
We both think that Dartmouth has a shot at making some moves against its remaining conference opponents and making a run at the league crown. Knapp thinks our offense is the key to all of this. Not a bad angle to take, since we've got the Ivy League's top scorer in Alex Barnett '09 -- aka Kobe Bryant 2.0. Seriously, Barnett didn't seem to find a place to shoot that he didn't like this weekend, but it's hard to argue with his shot selection when he hits five three-pointers on his way to 28 points against Brown and then connects for 13 versus Yale. And, when the rest of our team can find its shooting touch when opponents double Barnett, we have the potential to run away with games.
But they say defense wins championships, and I believe that if Dartmouth wants that coveted bid to the Big Dance, it will have to get it the old-fashioned way.
A lot of this has to do with the way our offense runs. Coach Terry Dunn favors mid- and long-range jumpers to getting our points in the paint -- think Jim Beilein-lite. Against Brown and Yale, we did get our points in the paint, but you could tell the Big Green preferred to get the ball to the outside for FGAs. Even when we do get inside and draw contact, Dartmouth has struggled from the charity stripe, shooting a league-low 62.7 percent as a team.
When our players can get around screens and get good looks at the basket, this system can yield big dividends. But statistically, three-point shooting percentage is almost always lower than field-goal percentage (33.0 for the former compared to 41.1 for Dartmouth this season), meaning we are making the calculated risk of missing more shots and thus putting up more rebounding opportunities.
While the Big Green ranks second in the Ivy League in offensive rebounding (10.9 boards per game), Dartmouth's opponents are inevitably going to have more chances to get the ball off of missed shots and take it the other way. With Cornell, Columbia and Princeton ranking one, two, three in defensive rebounding, the Big Green will need to get back and defend its own misses if it hopes to knock off the top Ivy teams during the last stretch of the season.
Another reason why Dartmouth's defense, rather than its offense, will determine its success is simply because it is the weaker of the two facets of the game. Scan through the Ivy League team defensive statistics and you'll find Dartmouth at least in the bottom half of most of the categories -- those numbers improve when you just take the Big Green's defensive performance in conference games.
The Yale game on Saturday, in particular, exposed our mediocre post defense, with the Bulldog's six-foot, seven-inch forward Ross Morin getting most of his 17 points in the paint. Also, if Dartmouth wants to be the best team in the conference, it can't be giving up 41-34 leads to lower-level teams like Brown and then be forced to pull out a victory in overtime.
The way I see it, Barnett and the rest of the Dartmouth players are going to put up shots -- the Big Green had 50 attempts to Yale's 38, and 61 versus Brown's 59. What the remaining games come down to, then, is how our defense can improve and hunker down as opponents like Cornell and Princeton get rebounds and take the ball the other way. If we can shut down things on our defensive end, then the Big Green could shock the Ivy League world in March.
