Road Trip Ends on Tuesday Night at Mercer on ESPN3

GAMEDAY INFORMATION at MERCER BEARS
Date & Time:	Tuesday, December 16, 7 p.m.	Dartmouth	Stats	Mercer
Location:	Macon, Ga.	3-5	Record	5-4
Arena (Capacity):	Hawkins Arena at The University Center (3,200)	Lost 1	Streak	Won 2
All-Time Series:	First Meeting	64.9	Scoring	67.6
Tickets:	Information	.453	FG%	.439
Broadcast // Stats:	ESPN3 — Dan Mathews, Kevin Canevari / Live Stats	.383	3FG%	.363
Logistics:	Directions // Seating Chart	.647	FT%	.690
Twitter:	@DartmouthSports // @DartmouthMBK	+3.1	Reb Margin	+2.6
Dartmouth Links:	Home // Roster // Schedule // Stats // Notes	13.5	Assists	12.4
Mercer State Links:	Home // Roster // Schedule // Stats // Notes	13.4	TO	12.1

Brief Southern Trip Ends at Mercer
•   Dartmouth completes a two-game trip to the South with its first-ever game in the state of Georgia at Mercer on Tuesday night shown on ESPN3.
•   The first game of the trek came at Jacksonville State on Sunday afternoon, which the Gamecocks won by a dozen points, 79-67.
•   Gabas Maldunas had one of his best games with the Big Green against JSU, hitting 11-of-15 field goals for 27 points (one shy of his career high) while grabbing 10 rebounds for his second straight double-double and the 12th of his career.
•   Dartmouth got an emotional lift at Jacksonville State with the return of senior wing John Golden to the floor. He missed the first seven games due to a knee injury, but managed to provide eight points and six rebounds in 26 minutes.
•   The Big Green's leading scorer, 5-11 guard Alex Mitola, chipped in 13 points on the strength of a trio of three-pointers and has scored in double figures in 12 straight games.
•   As a team, Dartmouth leads the league in three-point percentage at 38.3 with Mitola knocking down 45.6 percent (26-of-57). But the Green had a season-low three triples against the Gamecocks.
•   The defense was victimized for 41 points in the first half, the most the Big Green have allowed this season (previous high — 31).
•   Last week head coach Paul Cormier reached a milestone with his 500th game as a collegiate head coach between Fairfield and two stints at Dartmouth.

Series vs. Mercer
•   This is the 2,670th game for Dartmouth since starting the program in the 1900-01 season, but the first against any school from the state of Georgia — ever.
• This is just the sixth Big Green game against a current Southern Conference team. Dartmouth is 2-1 against Furman, and 1-0 versus both Samford and VMI. The most recent game was a loss at Furman in Greenville, S.C., 83-60, on Nov. 21, 2009.
•   Cormier has never coached against any of the current SoCon squads.

Scouting the Bears
•   Mercer is coming off an Atlantic Sun Tournament championship and a second-round upset victory over Duke at the NCAA Tournament last year before falling in the round of 32 to Tennessee.
•   The Bears joined the Southern Conference this year and have won their last two games, most recently the league opener against VMI, 90-81, to remain a perfect 4-0 at home this year.
•   Two of the Mercer's five victories have come against non-Division I teams in Piedmont (88-48) and St. Andrews (62-33).
•   The Bears have trotted out the same starting lineup in all nine games, and that quintet averages 55.8 of the team's 67.6 points per game.
•   The top scorer is 6-5 wing Ike Nwamu at 17.2 points per game while shooting 46.3 percent overall and 42.6 percent (20-of-47) from three-point range.
•   Point guard Phillip Leonard not only has a near 2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio with 5.3 helpers a game, he is also leading the team in shooting accuracy at 52.6 pct., but just 58.0 pct. at the line.
•   On the glass, Mercer has 6-10 T.J. Hallice at 6.7 rpg, and all five starters are capable rebounders.
•   Bob Hoffman is in his seventh season as the Bears' head coach, going 131-86 to date. The 2013 and 2014 A-Sun Coach of the Year led Mercer to its first NCAA Tournament in 29 years last season. Having also guided Oklahoma Baptist and Texas-Pan American, Hoffman is 441-242 in his 21st season as a men's head coach.

Golden Return
Dartmouth may have lost at Jacksonville State, but it gained a player with the return of John Golden to the floor. The senior wing missed the first seven games with a knee injury, but he showed no ill effects from that by playing 26 minutes off the bench while hitting 4-of-5 field goals for eight points while hauling in six rebounds and dishing out two assists with nary a turnover.

Maldunas No Mal
That's a little Spanish mashed up with the Lithuanian Gabas Maldunas. The 6-9 center was not bad, but quite good at Jacksonville State as he scored 27 points and snared 10 rebounds for his second straight double-double. He knocked down a career-high 11 field goals in 15 attempts to come up one point shy of his career best of 28.
His previous double-double was also his first of the season — 13 points and 10 rebounds at UMass Lowell on Dec. 10. It was his first in almost a full calendar year (Dec. 18, 2013 at UNH — about a month before a season-ending knee injury), and he now has 12 in his career. Only Yale's Justin Sears has more (13) among current Ivy Leaguers.

Back-to-Back 20-Point Wins
Dartmouth had its first winning streak of the season, beating both Maine (23) and UMass Lowell (21) by at least 20 points. It had been more than 15 years since the Big Green had 20-point wins in consecutive games, having last accomplished the feat Jan. 23 and 30 in 1999 against Denver (75-50) and Brown (70-46).

Mitola Doubling Up on Digits
Alex Mitola has scored in double figures in each of the first eight contests this season and ranks fourth in the league at 15.0 ppg. He is the first Big Green player with more than five in a row in one season since Alex Barnett '09 had at least 10 in his last 15 games in 2008-09 (Connor Boehm has a current six-game streak as well). Going back to last season, Mitola's streak stands at 11 games.

500 and 300
Dartmouth head coach Paul Cormier reached a second milestone in less than two weeks when the Big Green beat UMass Lowell on Dec. 10 — his 500th as a collegiate head coach between Dartmouth and Fairfield. He also coached his 300th game as Dartmouth's head coach on Nov. 30 against his alma mater, New Hampshire. Only two other coaches in program history have guided the squad for more games — Alvin “Doggie” Julian oversaw 419 games from 1950-66, and Cormier's former assistant Dave Faucher coached 344 contests from 1992-2004.

50 Percent Threshold
Connor Boehm and Gabas Maldunas are two of just seven players in the Ivy League hitting at least half of their shots. Boehm is third in the conference at .532 while Maldunas is sixth at .514 (Alex Mitola is eighth at .494). Even more impressive is that Boehm is shooting a touch better than 50 percent for his career, a mark only seven other Dartmouth players with at least 200 field goals have achieved, led by Brian Burke '84 (.572, 406-of-710).

Among the League Leaders
Entering this week, junior Alex Mitola was leading the Ivy League in two statistical categories — three-pointers per game (3.3) as well as assist-to-turnover ratio (3.1). He and Malik Gill make for a good 1-2 punch in that latter category as Gill is second with a 2.3 ratio. Gabas Maldunas was tied for second in blocked shots per game (2.1) and tied with teammate Connor Boehm for seventh in rebounding at 7.3 boards a night.

Schedules