Always-Tough Penn-Princeton Trip on Tap This Weekend

GAMEDAY INFORMATION at PENN QUAKERS // PRINCETON TIGERS
Date & Time	Friday, January 30, 7 p.m. // Saturday, January 31, 6 p.m.	Dartmouth	Stats	Penn	Princeton
Location	Philadelphia, Pa. // Princeton, N.J.	8-8, 1-1	Record	5-10, 0-1	8-9, 1-0
Arena (Capacity)	The Palestra (8,722) // Jadwin Gym (6,854)	Won 2	Streak	Won 1	Won 3
All-Time Series	Quakers lead 149-58 // Tigers lead 145-52	62.4	Scoring	63.3	68.6
Tickets	Penn // Princeton	.429	FG%	.452	.445
Broadcast	ESPN3 // Big Green Insider on the Ivy League Digital Network	.355	3FG%	.312	.384
Penn Logistics	Directions // Parking // Seating Chart	6.2	3FG/g	4.9	9.3
Princeton Logistics	Directions // Parking // Seating Chart	.672	FT%	.654	.719
Twitter	@DartmouthMBK // @DartmouthSports	+2.1	Reb Margin	+3.3	-3.1
Dartmouth Links	Home // Roster // Schedule // Stats // Notes // Live Stats	12.9	Assists	12.3	13.9
Penn Links	Home // Roster // Schedule // Stats // Notes	12.7	TO	17.1	12.2
Princeton Links	Home // Roster // Schedule // Stats // Notes	7.1	Steals	6.5	6.0

Alex Mitola feature on OneBidWonders.com

Next Challenge at Penn, Princeton
•   The Quakers and Tigers may both have losing records entering the weekend, but the trip to Penn and Princeton is historically the most difficult Ivy weekend for Dartmouth.
•   Since the advent of Ivy play in 1955-56, the Big Green have swept this weekend just once, that coming in the 2008-09 campaign.
•   Dartmouth is riding a high, however, as it defeated Harvard in Cambridge last Saturday, 70-61, ending an 11-game skid against the Crimson and handing them just their fourth home loss since 2010-11.
•   Alex Mitola was named the Ivy League Co-Player of the Week for scoring a game-high 18 points against Harvard while going 10-for-10 at the foul line, all in the last 1:34 of the game.
•   No other Big Green player reached double figures, but six scored between six and nine points, including Malik Gill who also added four rebounds, six assists and three steals.
•   As a team Dartmouth swiped the ball 13 times for the second straight game, led by a career-high four steals by Tommy Carpenter.
•   Mitola is fifth in scoring (14.3 ppg) in the Ivy League, while Connor Boehm (10.9) and Gabas Maldunas (10.5) also average in double figures.

Series vs. Penn
•   Dartmouth has squared off against the Quakers 207 times previously with Penn holding a lopsided 149-58 advantage.
• The two teams split the series last year with each school winning on its home court. The Big Green won in Hanover, 67-58, before the Quakers posted a nine-point win at The Palestra, 74-65.
•   Alex Mitola has averaged 15.0 points in four career games against Penn, but had just four points in the last meeting.
•   Head coach Paul Cormier is 6-16 against Penn in his collegiate coaching career.
•   Since the Palestra opened on Jan. 1, 1927, the Green have posted an 18-70 record against the Quakers there, but have won just four of their last 55 contests in the arena (two in the last six years).

Scouting the Quakers
•   Since opening the season with five straight losses, Penn has split 10 games, including a 56-52 victory over St. Joseph's in The Palestra last Saturday.
•   The Quakers are at their best around the rim, shooting .515 inside the arc (Ivy-best .452 overall) while sporting a rebound margin of plus-3.3.
•   Guard Tony Hicks is Penn's leading scorer (14.0 ppg) and top outside threat with 27 three-pointers at a .355 clip.
•   The other Quaker averaging double figures is Darien Nelson-Henry at 11.1 ppg while ranking third in the league in field goal percentage (.539).
•   Other scoring threats inside are Greg Louis (63.5 FG pct.) and Mike Auger (61.0 pct.), and the trio combine with Nelson-Henry for 17.1 rpg.
•   Penn has had its struggles from long range (.312) and the foul line (.654), as well as turnovers (-4.6 margin), ranking last in the league in all three.
•   Head coach Jerome Allen (Penn '09) played for the Quakers from 1991-95 and became the John R. Rockwell Head Coach on Dec. 14, 2009, taking over the program in midseason. He sports a record of 61-95 but is 8-2 against the Big Green.

Series vs. Princeton
•   This is the 208th game in the series that dates back to 1905. The Tigers have the edge at 145-62.
•   Dartmouth ended a personal eight-game skid against Princeton last year in the first meeting, besting the Tigers in overtime, 78-69. But Princeton avenged its defeat three weeks later at Jadwin Gym in a 67-57 decision.
•   Tyler Melville had 25 points and John Golden added 19 in the win at Leede Arena, while Connor Boehm and Wesley Dickinson had 11 and 10, respectively, in the loss.
•   The last Big Green victory at Princeton came on Feb. 21, 2009 by a final of 66-63, one of just three wins at Jadwin Gym (others in 1987, 2007) in the 45 times Dartmouth has played there.
•   Big Green coach Paul Cormier is 5-17 versus the Tigers during his collegiate coaching career.

Scouting the Tigers
•   Princeton suffered through a five-game skid early in the season, but has won five of its last six and is 7-1 at Jadwin Gym this season.
•   Since nipping Penn three weeks ago, 78-74, the only game the Tigers have played was a 96-48 blowout of Rowan last Sunday.
•   Princeton is the three-point shootingest team in the league, averaging 9.3 triples per game while converting them at a 38.4 percent rate.
•   Four players have hit 38 percent or more of their threes with at least 20 total, led by the two Tigers scoring in double figures — Hans Brase (39 3FG, .382) and Spencer Weisz (35 3FG, .435).
•   Brase leads the rebounding effort with 7.4 boards a game, but Princeton has the worst rebound margin in the league at minus-3.1.
•   As a team, the Tigers are second among Ivy schools in scoring (68.6), field goal percentage (.445) and free throw percentage (.719).
•   Mitch Henderson (Princeton '98) is in his fourth year as the Franklin C. Cappon-Edward C. Green '40 Head Coach with a 66-41 record entering the weekend. He played in three NCAA Tournaments with the Tigers and spent 11 years as an assistant at Northwestern.

Penn Game on ESPN3
The game at Penn on Friday night will be shown live online through ESPN3, the second Dartmouth game to be featured on the network. The Big Green won the first one at Mercer back on Dec. 16, 67-51, and are hoping to repeat that result. Ivy League Digital Network subscribers will need to tune in to ESPN3 to watch the game live, but will be able to watch the Princeton game on the ILDN Saturday.

Ivy Co-Player of the Week
Junior Alex Mitola was named the Ivy League's Co-Player of the Week for leading the Big Green to an upset victory at Harvard on Jan. 24, 70-61. The 5-11 guard posted a game-high 18 points with two three-pointers and 10 free throws in as many attempts. Each of those foul shots came in the final 1:34 of the game to seal the win, and he also contributed three rebounds, three assists and a steal. He is the first Dartmouth player to earn the honor since he was selected after the final games of the regular season last year.

Back to Even
The 70-61 win at Harvard boosted the Big Green's record to 8-8, the first time they have been at .500 this late in a season since the 2007-08 campaign when they were also 8-8. A win at Penn on Friday would put Dartmouth over .500 as late as 17 games into a season since the 1998-99 team finished the year 14-12.

Streaking Not Allowed
After 16 games this season, Dartmouth has yet to have a winning streak of more than two games. On the flip side, the Green haven't had a losing streak longer than two games either. It has been more than 30 years since the team has had a stretch of back-and-forth this long; the 1983-84 squad coached by Reggie Minton played its last 18 games winning or losing one or two games at a time.

Beating a Tournament Team
With the 67-51 triumph over Mercer, the Big Green had their first victory over a team that had won at least one game in the NCAA Tournament the previous year since a 64-57 win over Cornell on Jan. 28, 2011. Mercer beat Duke in the tourney last year, while the Big Red advanced to the Sweet 16 in 2010. Dartmouth duplicated the feat when it handed Harvard, which topped Cincinnati in the second round last season, a 70-61 defeat on Jan. 24.

Rally from Double-Digit Deficit
For the second time this season, Dartmouth rallied from a double-digit deficit to win, this time at Harvard. The Big Green trailed by 14, 43-29, with 13 minutes to play, then they put together an astonishing 26-2 run to win by nine. Dartmouth also beat IPFW back on Nov. 28, 68-67, after falling behind by 10 points in the first half. Before these two triumphs, the last time the Green trailed by double digits at any point in a game and still won was against Army (12) on Dec. 11, 2010. And the last time Dartmouth trailed by as many as 14 in a game before rallying to win came on Nov. 18, 1998 at Vermont in a 69-64 victory. The Catamounts led by 14, 48-34, with 12 minutes to go, only to have the Big Green outscore them the rest of the way, 35-16.

Consecutive Free Throws
With his 10-for-10 performance at the charity stripe at Harvard on Jan. 24, Alex Mitola has converted 24 straight free throws. He has quite a way to go to reach the Dartmouth record, however, which is of Joe DiMaggio proportions (and from the same era). Three-time All-American Gus Broberg '41 hit no less than 56 straight foul shots over the 1938-39 and 1939-40 seasons, including the final 54 he attempted in the former campaign.

Swiper No Swiping!
Sorry for the Dora the Explorer reference. My kid long since moved on from that, but some things just won't leave my consciousness from that show. Anyway … in each of the last two games, Dartmouth has swiped the ball a season-high 13 times, the most against a Division I opponent since nabbing 13 at Yale on March 6, 2009. Against NJIT, it was Gabas Maldunas and Miles Wright providing most of the thefts with four apiece, while Tommy Carpenter robbed Harvard a career-best four times in just 14 minutes of action.

Smothering Gill
True, gills are normally thought of as allowing fish to breathe. But Malik Gill smothers opponents with his relentless defense, leading the team with 25 steals despite averaging little more than 17 minutes a game. The 5-9 guard has pestered opponents throughout his career with 107 steals, tied for 13th all-time at Dartmouth. Of the 12 players ahead of him, no one is even close to his rate of one steal per 9.1 minutes on the court; the closest is James Blackwell '91 at one per 15.8 minutes.

Win at Harvard Snaps Streaks
Before beating Harvard at Lavietes Pavilion on Jan. 24, Dartmouth had not been victorious against the Crimson since that very date at that very site six years earlier, snapping a personal 11-game skid. The win also ended Harvard's nine-game winning streaks at home and in Ivy League play.

Nice Carpenter-y Work vs. Harvard
The first time Dartmouth met the Crimson this season, Tommy Carpenter played just seven minutes, but stole the ball three times. Two weeks later, he victimized Harvard again with four steals in 14 minutes, and added eight points while hitting every shot he took (three layups, two free throws). His seven steals in the first two Ivy games make him the leader in the category against conference teams.

Schedules