Ivy League Men's Basketball Preseason Poll Announced

HANOVER, N.H. — The Ivy League released the preseason men's basketball poll today with the Dartmouth Big Green picked to finish eighth. Princeton was chosen as the conference favorite, receiving 12 of 17 first-place votes and 128 points, eight more than Harvard, which garnered four first-place votes. The two-time defending champion, Cornell, was listed third with the other vote for the top spot in the standings.

Rounding out the poll were Penn in fourth place with 89 points, Yale in fifth with 57, Brown sixth with 55 and Columbia seventh with 48.

Dartmouth is coming off a tumultuous 5-23 season in which Terry Dunn resigned from his head coaching duties and was replaced by Mark Graupe, his top assistant, on an interim basis. At the conclusion of the season, the college hired Paul Cormier, who had coached the Big Green for seven years (1984-91) and led the team to a pair of second-place finishes while going 87-95 during his tenure.

“The last time I was here, we got to be a pretty competitive program, and the school was happy about that,” Cormier stated during the Ivy League teleconference call with the media today. “But going to the next level from being competitive to truly have a shot at winning, I don't think everyone was on the same page. Through the interview process, and with the new athletics director, Harry Sheehy who is a basketball guy, and Dr. Kim, the school's president for the past 13 months, there is no question that it is important for them to have a successful men's basketball program. This is not an overnight process, so we need to get a couple recruiting classes in here and make our way to being competitive with the rest of the Ivy League.”

During his first stint in Hanover, Cormier guided the Big Green to two of the three winningest seasons at Dartmouth of the past 50 years — the 1987-88 team went 18-8 overall and 10-4 in the Ivy League (missing a share of the Ivy title after a one-point loss in the final game of the season), while the 1988-89 team went 17-9 overall with an identical 10-4 mark in conference play, just one game back in the Ivy standings. After his initial campaign, Cormier's Big Green teams went 73-57 over the next five years, including 40-30 in the Ivy League.

He left Dartmouth for the head coaching job at Fairfield, where he built the Stags up to a 20-win team by his fifth year in 1995-96 as they won a share of the MAAC regular-season crown. After losing a tough-fought MAAC Tournament championship game, Fairfield was awarded an NIT bid and hosted Providence in the opening round. Injuries plagued the favored Stags the following year, but they got healthy in time for the conference tournament, sweeping the three games to earn the school's third trip to the NCAA Tournament. Paired up against North Carolina as a 16-seed, Fairfield gave the Tar Heels (who eventually advanced to the Final Four) all they could handle before falling, 82-74.

Darmouth has eight of the 12 lettermen returning from a year ago, including two seniors, Ronnie Dixon and Clive Weeden, who will serve as co-captains for the 2010-11 campaign. Dixon was the Big Green's leading scorer last year with an average of 9.3 points per game, while Weeden topped the team in rebounding at 4.8 per game. Dartmouth has a budding long-range shooter in sophomore R.J. Griffin, who connected on 40.6 percent of his three-point shots last year, while Dixon led the team in trifectas with 25 and free throw percentage at .820. The Big Green also have an influx of six freshmen on the roster, including an international player in Gediminas Bertasius, a 6-5 forward from Lithuania.

The season will open at Providence College on Friday, Nov. 13 at 7 p.m., and the local fans in Hanover will get their first look at the Big Green at the home opener three days later, Nov. 16, against in-state rival New Hampshire in Leede Arena at 7 p.m.

Schedules