Season Opens at Seton Hall Friday Night

DARTMOUTH (0-0) at
SETON HALL (0-0)
PRUDENTIAL CENTER, NEWARK, N.J.
FRIDAY, NOV. 13, 2015 • 7 P.M.
Televison: Fox Sports Networks (check your local listings for the station carrying the game)
Live Audio ($): Pirate Sports Network — Gary Cohen (play-by-play), Dave Popkin (analyst)
Radio: AM 970 The Answer
All-Time Series: Dartmouth leads 4-3

Season Opener
•   Dartmouth opens up its 2015-16 season on the road for a second straight year, playing Seton Hall for the eighth time in the history of the two programs.
•   The Big Green have not won a season opener outside of Hanover since Nov. 19, 1999 in a neutral-site game against Colgate.
•   The last time Dartmouth won a season opener on an opponent's home court was during head coach Paul Cormier's first tenure with the Big Green at Vermont on Nov. 28, 1987.
•   In the first 114 seasons of Dartmouth basketball, the program has posted a 76-38 record in season openers. The Big Green's longest winning streak (15) on opening day came from the 1929-30 through the 1943-44 seasons.
•   In last year's opener at St. Bonaventure, Dartmouth trailed by just one at the half before the Bonnies pulled away to beat the Green, 77-57. Kevin Crescenzi tied Alex Mitola for the team lead with 10 points while Connor Boehm pulled down 11 boards.
•   Head coach Paul Cormier is 6-6 in season openers at Dartmouth. He won his first four, but his losses have come against Virginia, Boston College, Richmond, Providence, Rutgers and St. Bonaventure.

Meet Your Big Green
• Dartmouth graduated three starters, leaving this year's team returning 60 percent of its minutes, 57 percent of its scoring, 54 percent of its three-pointers and 64 percent of its rebounding.
•   The Big Green have six seniors on the squad, led by captain Tommy Carpenter. But Connor Boehm is the one on pace to become the 28th player in Dartmouth history to score 1,000 points in a career (enters the season with 815).
•   After appearing in 75 games during his first three years, nearly all as a reserve, Malik Gill is slated to move into the starting point guard position. The 5-9 senior has 188 assists to his name and is ninth all-time in program history with 125 steals.
•   Dartmouth also has last year's Ivy League Rookie of the Year on the roster in wing Miles Wright.

Series vs. Seton Hall
•   This is the eighth meeting between these two, but first since Dartmouth defeated the Pirates, 54-53, at the Rochester Classic on Dec. 30, 1978.
• The Big Green are 4-3 against Seton Hall with the first encounter coming during the 1914-15 campaign with the Pirates earning a 26-24 victory.
•   Dartmouth is 17-26 all-time against current Big East schools.

Scouting the Pirates
•   Seton Hall posted a record of 16-15 last year and a 6-12 mark in the Big East to tie for seventh, then were bounced from the conference tournament by Marquette in the first round, 78-56.
•   The Pirates won 14 of their first 17 games before hitting a tailspin from which they could not recover, dropping 12 of their final 14 contests.
•   Like Dartmouth, two starters return in shooting guard Isaiah Whitehead (12.0 ppg, 3.9 rpg) and power forward Angel Delgado (9.3 ppg, 9.8 rpg).
•   Seton Hall lists one senior on its roster in guard Derrick Gordon (9.8 ppg, 4.9 rpg at UMass last year) who is playing as a graduate student, as is forward Braeden Anderson (1.0 ppg, 1.8 rpg at Fresno State) who has two years of eligibility left.
•   Kevin Willard (Pitt '97) is in his sixth year with the Pirates, owning a 82-81 record there and a 127-130 mark over eight seasons as a Division I head coach.

Opener Televised on FSN
The season opener at Seton Hall will be televised by the Fox Sports Networks, with a number of the regional channels picking up the broadcast. Check your local listings to see if you can get a first look at the 2015-16 Dartmouth Big Green.

Year 3 of Ivy League Digital Network
All home games and every Ivy League contest — a total of 21 games — will be streamed live in high-definition this season through the Big Green Insider channel on the Ivy League Digital Network. Visit DartmouthSports.com, the official website of Dartmouth athletics, for information on how to subscribe and watch the action on your computer, tablet or phone.

Preseason Poll
Just as they were last year, the Big Green were pegged to finish sixth in the preseason media poll. Harvard, which has earned the Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament each of the past four seasons, tumbled to fourth with heavy losses to graduation and injury. The team picked to win, Yale, received just five of the 17 first-place votes, while the next two teams — Columbia and Princeton — each had six. Dartmouth bested its prediction by two places in the final standings; how high can the Green go this year?

Postseason Berth
Last season, for the first time in 56 years, Dartmouth played a postseason basketball game. While it wasn't in the NCAA Tournament, the Big Green did get a taste of postseason action with their game at Canisius in the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT). Dartmouth fell to the Golden Griffins, 87-72, but the Green ended one of the longest postseason droughts in the NCAA. And it only took winning their last five Ivy games to qualify for the postseason with .500 records in the league (7-7) and overall (14-14).

How Long Ago Was 1959?
Yes, 56 years is a long time between postseason appearances. But just how long ago was it? It was long enough that:
•   Dwight Eisenhower was president.
•   Syracuse was the national champion in football.
•   Alaska and Hawaii became states (Hawaii even signed into statehood on March 18, the same day as Dartmouth's CIT game at Canisius).
•   Gas was 31 cents a gallon (everyone always wants to know that).
•   Ben-Hur won the Oscar for Best Picture.
•   Plan 9 From Outer Space premiered as well.
•   Gunsmoke was the top TV program.
•   Frankie Avalon had two #1 hits (Venus and Why).
•   Yet the music died.

Ivy League Rookie of the Year
Miles Wright joined an elite group of players when he was announced as the Ivy League Rookie of the Year in 2014-15. Only seven other Big Green players have ever earned the honor (three when it was Sophomore of the Year before freshman eligibility) — Bill Raynor (1972), Adam Sutton ('74), Larry Cubas ('75), Bryan Randall ('85), Jim Barton ('86), Sea Lonergan ('94) and Leon Pattman (2004).

Wright averaged 7.7 points and 2.9 rebounds a game while ranking among the league leaders in steals with 42. He raised his profile in the middle of the Ivy season when he scored in double figures for six straight games, averaging 17.0 points and 4.2 rebounds while shooting 57.8 percent (37-of-64) with 12 three-pointers, earning the Ivy League Rookie of the Week award in back-to-back weeks.

Man of Steal
In each of the three years Malik Gill has played thus far, he has led the team in steals, despite ranking anywhere from sixth to ninth on the team in minutes played. He finished second in the Ivy League as a freshman with 50 steals, a total topped by only four players in Dartmouth history, including Kenny Mitchell '97 twice. As a sophomore he once again led the team with 32. He was nearly beaten out last year by Miles Wright, who had 42 thefts, but Gill one-upped him with 43. For his career, he ranks ninth on the Big Green all-time leaders with 125 swipes, and has stolen the ball once for every 9.9 minutes on the court.

1,000 Points on the Horizon …
Senior Connor Boehm is still a ways off from becoming the 28th player in Dartmouth history to score 1,000 points in a career as he needs 185 to reach the milestone. He is also the seventh most accurate shooter ever at Dartmouth with his field goal percentage of .506. Only seven Big Green players have finished a career hitting at least half of their shots, and Boehm has the chance to become the eighth.

… As the Sun Sets on Two Others
Boehm's production will help mitigate the loss of the two 1,000-point scorers that graduated last spring. Gabas Maldunas put up 1,084 points in his four years in the Green and White, earning All-Ivy Second Team honors twice in the process. He also is one of just four Ivy Leaguers ever to score 1,000 points, collect 700 rebounds and record 100 steals in a career.
Alex Mitola hit the milestone in what turned out to be his final game with the Big Green, finishing with 1,007 points to his name. The 5-11 guard proceeded to graduate in three years and will play his final year of eligibility with the Colonials of George Washington in the Atlantic-10 this year.

Playing Spoiler
Something had to give. In the 2014-15 season finale, Dartmouth was playing for a .500 record and a shot at the postseason, while Yale was playing for an Ivy League title and its first trip to the NCAA Tournament since 1962. Only fitting it would come down to the final second of play when Gabas Maldunas dropped in a layup to lift the host Big Green to a stunning 59-58 victory over the Bulldogs. Yale went on to lose a one-game playoff to Harvard, 53-51, and was left out of all postseason competition despite a 22-10 record.

Oh Captain my Captain
With the early graduation of one of last year's co-captains, Alex Mitola, Dartmouth was denied its first two-year captain since Robby Pride '10. Instead the players voted for senior Tommy Carpenter. He may not fill up the stat sheet, but he has done innumerable things on the court to contribute to many a Big Green victory. Last year he saw action in every game, starting three times, but it was his play down the stretch that was key to Dartmouth winning its last five Ivy games. He hit double digits in scoring four times — all in the last eight regular-season games, including a season-high 13 in wins over Penn and Yale.

Schedules

Players Mentioned

Connor Boehm

Tommy Carpenter

Kevin Crescenzi

Malik Gill

Gabas Maldunas

Alex Mitola

Miles Wright

Footer

Schedules

Completed Event: Men's Basketball at Penn on February 21, 2025 , Loss , 75, to, 88

Completed Event: Men's Basketball at Princeton on February 22, 2025 , Win , 76, to, 61

Completed Event: Men's Basketball versus RV Yale on February 28, 2025 , Loss , 67, to, 72

Completed Event: Men's Basketball versus Brown on March 1, 2025 , Win , 78, to, 58

Completed Event: Men's Basketball at Harvard on March 8, 2025 , Loss , 58, to, 66

Completed Event: Men's Basketball versus Cornell on March 15, 2025 , Loss , 71, to, 87