Men’s basketball tips off its season this Sunday at home against Lyndon State College. Lyndon State beat the University of Quebec at Montreal last Friday, putting up an impressive 85 points to Montreal’s 78.
“I would like to think we have somewhat of an advantage as far as size,” head coach Paul Cormier said. “It was scary that they scored 85 points. I don’t know enough about their talent and the people they scrimmaged, but the fact that they scored 85 points shows that they have some firepower.”
The Big Green hopes that Lyndon’s high-scoring offense will crumble against its defense.
“We’re going to be pretty good defensively,” Cormier said. “That’s our m.o. We’re hard to score against.”
Last season, Lyndon went 19-9 overall, far overshadowing the Big Green’s 9-19 overall record from the same season. Lyndon, however, is a Division III team, giving Dartmouth an obvious advantage.
“We need to make sure that we stay focused the whole game and don’t give up any easy points,” center and forward Gabas Maldunas ’15 said. “We need to be happy with where we are and just keep going and make it a big point game.”
A win this Sunday would represent more than just a victory over a Division III team. The Big Green has had a string of tough seasons: In the 2011-2012 season, its overall record came to just 5-25.
“What we really need out of this preseason is to instill the winning mindset,” captain Tyler Melville ’14 said. “We haven’t won a lot of games, but we have the skills to do so. I think our schedule is catered to help our playing style in that we definitely see teams that will be competitive but also teams we can beat. I think it’s good to incorporate both types of games, because it’s important to win but definitely good to be the underdogs sometimes.”
Melville, the lone senior on the team, represents the first class to be brought up entirely by Cormier. He joined as a freshman, the same year Cormier began at Dartmouth for the second time.
Cormier coached at Dartmouth back in 1985 after scouting for the NBA, and has taken special care to construct a team that can ultimately emerge victorious in the Ivy League.
“I would like us to be a team that, night in and night out, are in a position to win, especially in the Ivy League but also in nonconference,” Cormier said. “We have a lot of 50/50 games. I hope that we’re going to be able to execute so we can win as many games as possible and make a marked improvement.”
This year, the team seems to be of a completely different breed. In two scrimmages, each of which had two 20-minute halves and a 10-minute period of play, the team emerged victorious from most of the independent periods against Assumption College and Central Connecticut State University.
“The team has changed completely since my freshman year,” Melville said. “We’ve changed the culture of the team as far as having a winning mentality, and we’re definitely improving. We’re going to show what our coach is teaching us.”
This season the Big Green picked up new assistant coach Anthony Goins, who was a practice player at St. John’s University and has experience coaching basketball on the East Coast.
“Coach Goins is a terrific, terrific addition to our staff,” Cormier said. “Anthony brings a wealth of knowledge not just with recruiting, but he has the contacts and the wherewithal to be able to work with some of the younger kids.”
Other exciting developments on the horizon include the televising of the Dartmouth and Harvard University basketball game later in the season. Harvard was predicted to win the Ivy League this season, while Dartmouth was placed sixth.
“There’s no question that Harvard is the elite team,” Cormier said. “Yale and Princeton are good so they’re in that second tier, while Brown has got some kids that are hard to match up with on their front line, but I think we can catch some of those teams. I know that we can beat them, so it depends on us and them and how we do against other teams. Our goal is to compete for the championship.”
In addition to the return of its defensive strength with players like Maldunas, who led the team in rebounds last season, this new Dartmouth team has incredible chemistry that it hopes will help them take revenge against teams that have dismantled them in years past like Bryant University, the second matchup.
“We definitely want to make sure we come out hard and strong,” Melville said. “We want to run the plays to perfection because we know we will make mistakes early in the season, but we want to enforce the concepts that the coach has taught us and play together as a team and enforce that family value. The ultimate goal is to win an Ivy League championship, and we believe we have the chance to do so.”
