Dartmouth Has First Road Test of the Year at Davidson, Loyola

Friday, November 9

Davidson, N.C.

7:00 PM

Dartmouth College

Davidson

Photo by: Gil Talbot

Dartmouth Has First Road Test of the Year at Davidson, Loyola

11/9/2018 9:15:00 AM | Men's Basketball

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The trip pits the Big Green against a 2018 NCAA Tournament team and another they beat in the final seconds last year

By: Rick Bender

After the second-largest blowout victory in program history, 114-39, Dartmouth will get a stiffer challenge this weekend with games at Davidson — a 2018 NCAA Tournament team — and Loyola (Md.), a team the Big Green beat in the final seconds last year.
The Big Green got everyone into the act in the season opener as all 14 active players saw at least five minutes on the court with a dozen scoring.
Junior Brendan Barry led the onslaught with a career-high 26 points on 8-of-10 shooting from behind the arc as Dartmouth drained 22 long balls to set a new school record.
Sophomore Chris Knight was another of the five players in double figures while recording his first career double-double with 11 points and 10 boards.
More career highs from the game — junior James Foye with 18 points and eight rebounds, and junior Will Emery with 14 rebounds and six assists.
Freshman Wes Slajchert impressed in his collegiate debut, drilling 4-of-6 trifectas for 12 points while also handing out five assists.
As a team, the Big Green had 31 assists, another school record, as were their 64-rebound, 45 3-point attempts and 82 field goal tries.
The lone senior on the team, Guilien Smith, shook off the rust with a modest five points and four rebounds in his first game in nearly a full year. He missed all but three contests last season after averaging 12.0 points as a sophomore.

Series vs. Davidson

This is the fourth meeting between the two schools on the hardwood with the Wildcats owning a 2-1 advantage.
The first contest was on Dec. 18, 1965, a 19-point Davidson win, but the Big Green won the most recent contest, albeit over 40 years ago, 82-69, on Jan. 28, 1978.
The home team has won every game in the series.

Scouting the Wildcats

Davidson got the season off to a good start with an 83-63 victory over Cleveland State on Tuesday after being picked to finish third in the highly competitive Atlantic-10 in the preseason poll.
Last year, the 21-12 Wildcats won their conference tournament to advance to the NCAA Tournament where they lost a close game as a 12-seed in the first round to Kentucky, 78-73.
Davidson is not afraid to shoot from long distance (shades of Stephen Curry?), hitting 13-of-36 (.361) against Cleveland State.
Guards Kellan Grady and Jon Axel Gudmundsson earned preseason All-A-10 honors with Grady on the first team and Gudmundsson — also named to the league's all-defensive team — on the third.
Grady, the A-10 Rookie of the Year and projected future NBA draft pick, scored 24 points in the opener thanks to five 3-pointers.
Gudmundsson runs the offense and handed out seven assists with just one turnover, but is also a very good shooter (4-of-7 on 3-point attempts).
The Wildcats hit the boards hard in the opener, nearly doubling up Cleveland State, 47-25, with 21 offensive boards.
Davidson shoots well at the foul line and generally ranks among the nation's leaders by percentage in that category.
Bob McKillop (Hofstra '72) is in his 30th season guiding the Wildcats and currently sports a 555-340 record (.620). The 2008 NABC National Coach of the Year and 10-time conference coach of the year (SoCon, A-10) has 22 conference titles (14 regular season, 8 tournament) and taken Davidson to the NCAA Tournament nine times.

Series vs. Loyola

Like the Davidson series, this is the fourth meeting between the two teams — although every game has been within the last decade — with Dartmouth sporting a 1-2 mark against the Greyhounds.
The Big Green got their first win over Loyola last year when Brendan Barry drove for the game-winning layup with 1.7 seconds left in a 64-63 victory (see box and recap on page 21 in the PDF for more information).
The other two games came in consecutive years (2009 and '10) with the Greyhounds winning both by double digits.
Dartmouth is 96-139 all-time against current Patriot League schools, with this being the first of two games against league teams this season (Boston U).

Scouting the Greyhounds

Loyola, picked to finish 10th in the Patriot League this year, fell behind by 25 points in the first half of its season opener at St. John's before suffering a 76-55 defeat.
The Greyhounds are coming off a 9-22 season in which they tied for eighth in the conference standings with a 6-12 mark.
Although Loyola struggled from the floor against the Red Storm, hitting just 15-of-44 field goals (.341), it did win the battle on the boards (37-35) and got to the charity stripe often (22-of-32, .688).
Three of the five players that scored in double figures last year are back in 2018-19 — Chuck Champion, Andrew Kostecka and Isaiah Hart.
Kostecka led the Greyhounds on Tuesday with 17 points while Champion added 12, but Hart failed to score, missing all six of his field goal attempts.
Loyola will need to do a better job of taking care of the ball to be successful, however, after coughing it up 24 times in the opener.
The Greyhounds are under the guidance of first-year Tavaras Hardy (Northwestern '02), the 21st head coach in program history. An All-Big Ten player, he arrives at Loyola after two seasons on the staff at Georgia Tech. Prior to that, he was an assistant at Georgetown for two years (2014-16) and his alma mater for seven seasons (2007-14).

Records Fall in Season Opener
Dartmouth got a chance to see all 14 active players for a minimum of five minutes in the season-opening 114-39 victory over Division III Newbury. While the 114 points are "only" the second-most by a Big Green team, the 22 3-pointers, 31 assists, 64 rebounds, 61 first-half points (though the record for either half is 63), 45 3-point attempts and 82 field goal attempts all set new standards in the Dartmouth annals.

Barry Bombs Away
Without Brendan Barry's hot hand against Newbury on Nov. 6, Dartmouth would not have been able to set the school record for 3-pointers (22, previous record was 18 against Albany on Jan. 20, 2001). The junior guard had his stroke going for him that night, canning 8-of-10 shots from behind the arc (one shy of the record) to post a career-high 26 points. It was just his second career foray over 20 points, a total he reached by halftime.

Knight and Day
Chris Knight recorded his first career double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds in the season opener against Newbury, the latter figure also serving as a career high for the sophomore. This double-double is just the fourth by any current member of the Big Green squad, and first to come in a Dartmouth victory.

Boy Oh Foye
Making his first collegiate start in the season opener was junior James Foye. He made the most of his starting slot, producing a career high with 18 points while matching another with eight rebounds. It was the first time Foye had scored in double figures in college as he also set personal bests with seven field goals and four triples.

Hardly a Slajchert
Rookie Wes Slajchert wasted no time in showing off his skills in the season opener, drilling four treys for 12 points, dishing out five assists, blocking three shots and stealing the ball twice. That's a pretty full stat sheet, especially for someone whose name is pronounced SLACK-ert.

Let's Not Forget the Defense
Lost in the staggering offensive numbers in the season opener was the clamps put on by the defense. Newbury converted a mere 22.9 percent (16-of-70), the lowest for any Big Green opponent over the last 20 years. Dartmouth also held the Nighthawks to a mere six field goals and 15 points in the second half, the least allowed over the last 20 seasons.

Smith Hits 500
Senior Guilien Smith did not have his best game in the season opener, but still managed to score his 500th point on a second-half 3-pointer. He is the active career leader not only in points, but rebounds as well (143, tied with Will Emery).