Completed Event: Men's Basketball versus Yale on February 13, 2026 , Loss , 70, to, 83
Final
Men's Basketball
vs Yale
70
83
Alex Barnett: The Quiet Leader
1/23/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
The question jumps off the page so it's best to get it out of the way at the top. Why in the world wasn't senior Alex Barnett elected a Dartmouth basketball captain this year?
Is it that he's not a good enough player?
Let's be serious. The athletic 6-foot-6 forward from St. Louis who is equally adept at windmill dunking and knocking down 3-pointers from the corner was the top returning scorer and rebounder in the Ivy League this winter. He cracked the 1,000-point plateau earlier this season and is on pace to break into the Dartmouth career top-10 in scoring and perhaps rebounding before his final season is through.
Is it that he's not a team player?
Not a chance. In addition to being the Ivy's second-leading scorer so far this season (19.3 points per game), he leads the Big Green in assists (2.5 per game). And he's readily accepted the responsibility of taking that last shot with the game on the line.
Is it that people don't respect him as a leader? Hardly.
Barnett's coaches rave about his maturity and how “low-maintenance” he is, particularly for being what, by anyone's definition, is a star player.
So why then, wasn't the soft-spoken sociology major who plays the game with the grace of a dancer chosen a captain?
It was because for all his considerable gifts on the basketball court, Barnett believed others were better suited for the role of leading a young team trying to find its way this winter.
“I'm not a ?hoorah' type of guy and I'm not too big on words or talking,” he explained recently. “I'm more of an action-type guy, and I didn't think only leading by example would be enough for this team. I felt there were other players on the team like Robby (Pride) and Jarrett (Mathis) who would be better vocal leaders, so I chose to opt out of being a captain.
“Robby and Jarrett are very good at the talking aspect of being a leader. They are very good at getting people enthused about the game, getting them excited and ready to go, which is really important. I just didn't think I would be able to get everyone involved like that.”
The Catch-22, of course, is that the selfless character Barnett demonstrated by taking himself out of the running for captain of the Big Green is exactly the type of character you want from a captain. So while his name will not go down in Dartmouth annals as a captain, and you won't see him meeting with the officials at midcourt before the game, feel free to pencil him in as a de facto captain of coach Terry Dunn's squad.
To be sure, no one who has seen the him play could miss the leadership-by-example he exhibits on the court. If there's a player in the country who means more to his team than Barnett does to Dartmouth, he certainly can't mean much more.
Consider that Barnett tops the Big Green stats by a wide margin in made field goals (82), shots taken, 3-pointers (23), 3-pointers taken, free throws (44) and free throws taken, while also leading the squad in rebounds, assists, blocks, steals, points and scoring average at 19.3. You have to look hard to find a category in which he doesn't lead Dartmouth.
“He's a very, very talented, skilled kid,” Army coach Jim Crews said last week after Barnett had 17 points and seven rebounds against his team. “He lifts over you. He shoots 3's and can get in the post. He drives in and gets those 12-footers. You can play good defense against him and he'll still score.” Quinnipiac coach Tom Moore sounded even more impressed after the Big Green standout filled the stat sheet with 24 points, four assists and three blocks against the Bobcats in December: “Barnett's nearly impossible to guard at this level,” he told the morning paper. “Basically, what you are doing is taking one guy defensively and sacrificing his whole night to play him.”
A product of the powerhouse program at Cardinal Ritter College Prep in St. Louis, Barnett gave a clue of what was ahead when he threw down his first dunk after a big win at the Show Me State Games the summer after he finished 8th grade. He was all of 5-10 at the time. “When I got to my freshman year of high school I was probably 6-feet and dunking regularly,” said Barnett, who elicits a roar from the Leede Arena crowd and brings the Big Green bench to its feet once or twice a game either with high-flying dunks or jaw-dropping, acrobatic baskets.
As a sophomore, Barnett helped Ritter go 31-0 and capture the Missouri Class 3 state championship. One year later he was chosen to the Class 3 all-state first team. He went on to average 19.8 points, 11.5 rebounds and three blocks during a senior season in which he had a a 40-point, 20-rebound game, and a 24-point, 22-rebound, six-block game. Perhaps even more impressively, he would go on to graduate that spring No. 1 in his class at Cardinal Ritter.
“I had some doubts going in because it was a college prep and a private school, but I ended up being the valedictorian,” Barnett said. “I had a really outstanding freshman year once I saw I could compete in the classroom with anybody else, even in private school. The teaching staff and some of my classmates were a lot of help. One of my really good friends, Jordann Plummer, is the starting point guard at Drake and we'd be on the phone doing homework. She was like my study buddy, and we worked really hard together.”
Barnett also credits his mother and his grandmother, who both have degrees in elementary education, for helping him develop into an Ivy League-calibre student. “But it starts off with my great-grandmother. My Granny,” he said. “Because my mom was a teacher when I was really young I spent every day at my great-grandmother's house and she would read to me every day. Then when my mom stopped teaching and started her own in-home daycare center I spent every day with her, and one of her main priorities with the daycare center was working on early education. We basically started preschool earlier than most people.”
Barnett's hard work in the classroom paid off when academic schools that had taken note of his abilities on the court started writing and calling. He got a couple of letters from Stanford and has since heard from an assistant coach that Duke made an inquiry, although he's not sure that isn't a bit of an urban legend.
“I got a questionaire from Princeton that I never returned because I knew the type of offense that I wouldn't fit in there so I never really gave it a thought,” he said. “I ended up hearing from the Columbia coach and I got some letters from Penn.”
It was then-Dartmouth assistant Tommy Deffebaugh that Barnett credits for bringing him to Hanover for an October visit during his senior year of high school.
“It was in October, the Midnight Madness weekend,” he recalled. “It initially seemed like a big change from back home with all the woods and stuff, but the people they set me up with on my recruiting trip made it enjoyable. Leon Pattman was my host. He should be a car salesman.”
Barnett started three games as a freshman and scored a season-high 13 points against Harvard. He exploded on the scene as a sophomore, scoring in double figures 17 times, with three consecutive double-doubles and finishing the season as an honorable-mention, All-Ivy pick.
Last year he scored 15.6 points per game and pulled down 7.6 rebounds while earning a spot on the All-Ivy second team. He posted six double-doubles including a 25-point, 11-rebound outing against Vermont.
Already this year he torched Big East Providence for a career-high 28 points and topped that with a 32-point explosion against Vermont, a game in which he knocked down 6-of-7 shots from outside the arc.
Barnett draws inspiration from older brother Zachary, a former defensive back at Arkansas-Pine Bluff who was a late cut by the New York Giants before playing in the Arena League. He'd like nothing more than to follow his brother into pro sports.
“I want to keep playing anywhere I can,” he said. “It would be great to get invited to an NBA summer camp, but playing overseas would be a really good option. To play anywhere would be fun.”
Whenever his playing days finally end he hopes not to be too far from the hardwood. “I'd like to work in basketball in some way,” he said. “Maybe as an assistant coach or working for a team in the NBA in some way. Maybe as a sports attorney, although that's just a dream.”
Is it that he's not a good enough player?
Let's be serious. The athletic 6-foot-6 forward from St. Louis who is equally adept at windmill dunking and knocking down 3-pointers from the corner was the top returning scorer and rebounder in the Ivy League this winter. He cracked the 1,000-point plateau earlier this season and is on pace to break into the Dartmouth career top-10 in scoring and perhaps rebounding before his final season is through.
Is it that he's not a team player?
Not a chance. In addition to being the Ivy's second-leading scorer so far this season (19.3 points per game), he leads the Big Green in assists (2.5 per game). And he's readily accepted the responsibility of taking that last shot with the game on the line.
Is it that people don't respect him as a leader? Hardly.
Barnett's coaches rave about his maturity and how “low-maintenance” he is, particularly for being what, by anyone's definition, is a star player.
So why then, wasn't the soft-spoken sociology major who plays the game with the grace of a dancer chosen a captain?
It was because for all his considerable gifts on the basketball court, Barnett believed others were better suited for the role of leading a young team trying to find its way this winter.
“I'm not a ?hoorah' type of guy and I'm not too big on words or talking,” he explained recently. “I'm more of an action-type guy, and I didn't think only leading by example would be enough for this team. I felt there were other players on the team like Robby (Pride) and Jarrett (Mathis) who would be better vocal leaders, so I chose to opt out of being a captain.
“Robby and Jarrett are very good at the talking aspect of being a leader. They are very good at getting people enthused about the game, getting them excited and ready to go, which is really important. I just didn't think I would be able to get everyone involved like that.”
The Catch-22, of course, is that the selfless character Barnett demonstrated by taking himself out of the running for captain of the Big Green is exactly the type of character you want from a captain. So while his name will not go down in Dartmouth annals as a captain, and you won't see him meeting with the officials at midcourt before the game, feel free to pencil him in as a de facto captain of coach Terry Dunn's squad.
To be sure, no one who has seen the him play could miss the leadership-by-example he exhibits on the court. If there's a player in the country who means more to his team than Barnett does to Dartmouth, he certainly can't mean much more.
Consider that Barnett tops the Big Green stats by a wide margin in made field goals (82), shots taken, 3-pointers (23), 3-pointers taken, free throws (44) and free throws taken, while also leading the squad in rebounds, assists, blocks, steals, points and scoring average at 19.3. You have to look hard to find a category in which he doesn't lead Dartmouth.
“He's a very, very talented, skilled kid,” Army coach Jim Crews said last week after Barnett had 17 points and seven rebounds against his team. “He lifts over you. He shoots 3's and can get in the post. He drives in and gets those 12-footers. You can play good defense against him and he'll still score.” Quinnipiac coach Tom Moore sounded even more impressed after the Big Green standout filled the stat sheet with 24 points, four assists and three blocks against the Bobcats in December: “Barnett's nearly impossible to guard at this level,” he told the morning paper. “Basically, what you are doing is taking one guy defensively and sacrificing his whole night to play him.”
A product of the powerhouse program at Cardinal Ritter College Prep in St. Louis, Barnett gave a clue of what was ahead when he threw down his first dunk after a big win at the Show Me State Games the summer after he finished 8th grade. He was all of 5-10 at the time. “When I got to my freshman year of high school I was probably 6-feet and dunking regularly,” said Barnett, who elicits a roar from the Leede Arena crowd and brings the Big Green bench to its feet once or twice a game either with high-flying dunks or jaw-dropping, acrobatic baskets.
As a sophomore, Barnett helped Ritter go 31-0 and capture the Missouri Class 3 state championship. One year later he was chosen to the Class 3 all-state first team. He went on to average 19.8 points, 11.5 rebounds and three blocks during a senior season in which he had a a 40-point, 20-rebound game, and a 24-point, 22-rebound, six-block game. Perhaps even more impressively, he would go on to graduate that spring No. 1 in his class at Cardinal Ritter.
“I had some doubts going in because it was a college prep and a private school, but I ended up being the valedictorian,” Barnett said. “I had a really outstanding freshman year once I saw I could compete in the classroom with anybody else, even in private school. The teaching staff and some of my classmates were a lot of help. One of my really good friends, Jordann Plummer, is the starting point guard at Drake and we'd be on the phone doing homework. She was like my study buddy, and we worked really hard together.”
Barnett also credits his mother and his grandmother, who both have degrees in elementary education, for helping him develop into an Ivy League-calibre student. “But it starts off with my great-grandmother. My Granny,” he said. “Because my mom was a teacher when I was really young I spent every day at my great-grandmother's house and she would read to me every day. Then when my mom stopped teaching and started her own in-home daycare center I spent every day with her, and one of her main priorities with the daycare center was working on early education. We basically started preschool earlier than most people.”
Barnett's hard work in the classroom paid off when academic schools that had taken note of his abilities on the court started writing and calling. He got a couple of letters from Stanford and has since heard from an assistant coach that Duke made an inquiry, although he's not sure that isn't a bit of an urban legend.
“I got a questionaire from Princeton that I never returned because I knew the type of offense that I wouldn't fit in there so I never really gave it a thought,” he said. “I ended up hearing from the Columbia coach and I got some letters from Penn.”
It was then-Dartmouth assistant Tommy Deffebaugh that Barnett credits for bringing him to Hanover for an October visit during his senior year of high school.
“It was in October, the Midnight Madness weekend,” he recalled. “It initially seemed like a big change from back home with all the woods and stuff, but the people they set me up with on my recruiting trip made it enjoyable. Leon Pattman was my host. He should be a car salesman.”
Barnett started three games as a freshman and scored a season-high 13 points against Harvard. He exploded on the scene as a sophomore, scoring in double figures 17 times, with three consecutive double-doubles and finishing the season as an honorable-mention, All-Ivy pick.
Last year he scored 15.6 points per game and pulled down 7.6 rebounds while earning a spot on the All-Ivy second team. He posted six double-doubles including a 25-point, 11-rebound outing against Vermont.
Already this year he torched Big East Providence for a career-high 28 points and topped that with a 32-point explosion against Vermont, a game in which he knocked down 6-of-7 shots from outside the arc.
Barnett draws inspiration from older brother Zachary, a former defensive back at Arkansas-Pine Bluff who was a late cut by the New York Giants before playing in the Arena League. He'd like nothing more than to follow his brother into pro sports.
“I want to keep playing anywhere I can,” he said. “It would be great to get invited to an NBA summer camp, but playing overseas would be a really good option. To play anywhere would be fun.”
Whenever his playing days finally end he hopes not to be too far from the hardwood. “I'd like to work in basketball in some way,” he said. “Maybe as an assistant coach or working for a team in the NBA in some way. Maybe as a sports attorney, although that's just a dream.”
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