Completed Event: Men's Basketball at Penn on February 21, 2025 , Loss , 75, to, 88
Final
Men's Basketball
at Penn
75
88
Spotlight on Cal Arnold
3/2/2006 7:00:00 PM | Men's Basketball
March 3, 2006
By Bruce Wood
The question, coming a few days before his final basketball game against Princeton, clearly took senior Cal Arnold aback.
Has it occurred to you, the 6-foot-9 senior co-captain of the Dartmouth men's basketball team was asked, that you might be Princeton's missing link?
Arnold hesitated for a second as the idea hit home. "I never really thought about it, but I guess now that you mention it ...," he said. It's tempting to play the "What if?" game because the Princeton offense works best with a center who is adept at both passing the basketball and knocking down the occasional shot from outside the arc and those are two skills in Arnold's tool box.
Flash back to the 2002-03 season when he had a 43 assists to just 16 turnovers, an outstanding ratio for anyone, but stunning for a center and even more so for a freshman center.
Now flash forward to the home stretch of his senior season. With four games to go Arnold had canned 41 career triples, likely a school record for someone who has spent so much of his career as a center.
Given his skill set, it's no surprise that Arnold captured the Tigers' attention as a senior at Analy High School. In fact, he had Princeton to thank for suggesting he do a year of prep school before college.
"I always wanted to go to an Ivy League school but that wasn't going to be an option with how late I was being recruited," he explained.
"I had other scholarship offers out in California and back East, but I'd always wanted to go to an Ivy League school and Princeton had recruited me. They said there were a couple prep schools right near them, the Hun School and Lawrenceville. If I went there they could check me out better and maybe I could go (to Princeton) the next year. No promises, but they definitely were interested and so was I."
Although Arnold was an all-league performer while helping Hun to a 19-7 record, orange and black wasn't in his future.
"I don't know if it was that I didn't like the town of Princeton, but I didn't really fall in love with the school," he said. "And they didn't really fall in love with me. So it was kind of a mutual thing that I look at other places."
While it was then-Dartmouth coach Dave Faucher who made initial contact with Arnold and Jay Tilton who recruited him hardest, it was Arnold's future teammates who put the college over the top.
"My dad always told me, and he played college ball, `You are going to spend so much time with these guys that they have to be guys you like,' " Arnold said. "And I liked them all. Last year's seniors: Steve Callahan, Mike McLaren, Mike Liddy and Dave Gardner are unbelievable guys. The older guys, too. It just seemed this was a
place you could enjoy for four years."
And enjoy it the economics and history double-major has, despite the cold, hard reality that it hasn't always been easy. After a solid freshman campaign and starting 20 games as a sophomore, his minutes played have gone down the past two years. This winter he's averaging 19.7 minutes per game, the least since his freshman season.
"Most of it this year has been my own fault with foul trouble," he said. "I've been pressing pretty hard. It's my senior year and I'm the type of personality that is extremely competitive. I don't ever want anybody to score on me. I guess in my mind fouling them is better than them scoring. "But I've gotten to start pretty much three years in my career and I played a lot as a freshman so I'm not going to complain," he said. Not even if he could have helped Princeton to the NCAA Tournament this winter as the Tigers' missing link.
"I've never second-guessed my choice of where I went to school," Arnold said. "With the won-loss record and being pretty highly recruited, you might think I'd question it but I haven't.
"Dartmouth is such an amazing place. I wouldn't trade it for anything."
Players Mentioned
G
/ Men's BasketballG
/ Men's BasketballG/F
/ Men's BasketballMBB Post Game Press Conference versus Brown 3.1.25
Sunday, March 02
MBB Post Game Press Conference versus Yale 2.28.25
Saturday, March 01
MBB Post Game Press Conference vs Cornell 2.15.25
Sunday, February 16
MBB Post Game Press Conference 2.14.25
Saturday, February 15
