Season Opens at Buffalo Friday Night

Friday, November 8

Buffalo, N.Y.

7:00 PM

Dartmouth College

Buffalo

Photo by: Doug Austin

11/8/2019 8:50:00 AM | Men's Basketball

Alumni Arena ESPN+Live Stats Dartmouth Notes McLaughlin Minute

Dartmouth gets a test early against a team that won more than 30 games each of the last two years

By: Rick Bender

DARTMOUTH (0-0)
at BUFFALO (0-0)
Friday, Nov. 8, 2019 | 7 PM | ESPN+
Alumni Arena | Buffalo, N.Y.

• Dartmouth opens up the 2019-20 season in its fourth season under head coach David McLaughlin, who guided the Big Green to an 11-19 overall last year after a pair of 7-20 campaigns.
• This is the fifth time in the last six years that Dartmouth is opening the season on the road. The team's last opening-day win outside of Hanover came in 20 years ago over Colgate at a neutral site. The last win in a true road game on opening day was at Vermont to open the 1987-88 season.
• In the first 118 seasons of Dartmouth basketball, the program has posted a 77-41 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.
• Last year, Dartmouth started off the season with a 114-39 triumph over Division III Newbury College, its largest margin of victory in 112 years. The Big Green set a school record with 22 3-pointers in the contest with Brendan Barry hitting 8-of-10 from long range, and James Foye and Wes Slajchert each draining four.

Meet Your Big Green
• Dartmouth has 12 players back from last year's team, though Brendan Barry will be sidelined for the season with an injury and Trevon Ary-Turner will see his first action after sitting out last season as a transfer from Weber State.
• Essentially two-thirds of the production from last year is back in an active role — 68.1 percent of the points, 63.3 percent of the rebounds, 66.2 percent of the assists and 67.0 percent of the minutes.
• Of the 16 active players (walk-on Ben Swett is off term), 10 are underclassmen with four sophomores and six freshmen.
• The leading returning scorer is junior Chris Knight (15.4 ppg), while two others who averaged double figures — seniors James Foye (10.8) and Ian Sistare (10.3) — are back as well.
• Dartmouth led the Ivy League in 3-point accuracy last year at 36.4 percent and was second with 8.7 triples per game.
• Newcomers to the team are guard Jackson Blaufeld (6-4, 200) along with forwards Demi Adelekun (6-8, 230), Paul Hudson (6-5, 225), Cam Krystkowiak (6-9, 215) and Nate Ogbu (6-7, 210). Krystkowiak is the son of nine-year NBA veteran Larry Krystkowiak, now the head coach at Utah.

Series vs. Buffalo
• This is the fourth meeting between these two on the hardwood. Dartmouth won the first two contests, 34-31 in Buffalo on Dec. 20, 1927 and 64-44 in Toledo on Dec. 29, 1996. But the Bulls hung a 110-71 defeat on the Big Green last year.
• Ian Sistare had a then-career-high 18 points to lead the Green in last year's contest at Buffalo while Chris Knight added 17. That duo hit 13-of-22 from the floor, but the rest of the team combined to shoot just 28.9 percent (13-of-45).
• The Big Green are 4-12 all-time against current MAC teams with other victories against Kent State 31 years ago and Northern Illinois just five years ago.
• Toledo has been the problem team from the MAC, beating Dartmouth in all six meetings.

Scouting the Bulls
• Buffalo is coming off a second-straight 30-win season, going 32-4 last year while advancing to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, falling to the eventual runner-up, Texas Tech.
• The Bulls lost all three of their players that averaged over 14 points a game, however, and four of their top five scorers. Only junior Jayvon Graves (9.7 ppg) returns from those top five this season.
• Just 855 of the 3,037 points scored return this year (28.2 percent) and 275 of the 1,014 rebounds (27.1 percent).
• Buffalo has won 25 straight games at home with its last loss a 73-62 setback against St. Bonaventure on Dec. 2, 2017.
• The Bulls are under new management — but not that new — as Jim Whitesell was named head coach last spring after serving as the associate head coach for four years. He has 24 years experience as a head coach at the Division I, II and III levels, most recently for seven years at Loyola Chicago, guiding the Ramblers to 109 victories.

ESPN+
Every Ivy League game, all home games and select road non-conference games will be streamed live on ESPN+, including the season opener at Buffalo. Fans can sign up for a monthly ($4.99) or annual ($49.99) subscription and see 20 of the 29 scheduled Big Green games this season. Visit espn.com/watch to find out how to subscribe and catch Dartmouth online all season.

Preseason Poll
Dartmouth was pegged to tie for seventh with Cornell in the preseason media poll. At the top is Harvard with 134 points and 15 of the 17 first-place votes, beating out Penn (117 points, two first-place votes) and Yale (94). Princeton is listed comfortably ahead of Brown for the fourth and final berth at the Ivy League Tournament with 88 points compared to the Bears' 62. The bottom three shape up with Columbia at 51), and Cornell and Dartmouth 31 apiece.

Oh Captains My Captains
Last year, Dartmouth featured three captains for the first time in 19 years. Two of those captains return in seniors James Foye and Ian Sistare, and they are joined by Brendan Barry to give the Green three once again. Prior to this stretch The last time the Big Green had three captains was in 1999-2000 with Chris Ellis, Shaun Gee and Jason Kemp leading the team.

Knightly Update
Chris Knight recorded eight 20-point games last season to lead Dartmouth, including a career-high 27 on 10-of-14 shooting against Cornell. For the season, he knocked down 192 field goals, the second most of any Big Green player in the last 30 years. Only 2009 Ivy League Player of the Year Alex Barnett hit more in that span (194). Knight finished the year fifth in the league in scoring (15.4 ppg) plus fourth in both field goal percentage (.499) and rebounding (6.8 rpg) as he earned All-Ivy League Second Team honors, just the second Big Green underclassman to earn all-league honors this millennium.

3-Point Team Records
Last year, Dartmouth knocked down 264 3-point field goals, breaking the old record of 263 set in 2001-02. But it wasn't nearly as close as it sounds — the Big Green entered the final weekend of the season tied for the record, then proceeded to go cold in hitting 1-of-35 from long range. Dartmouth also set the program single-game record in the season opener when it canned 22 triples.

Barry Out for the Season
Senior captain Brendan Barry will miss the 2019-20 campaign with an injury, leaving plenty of minutes and production for Dartmouth to make up. The point guard led the Ivy League in minutes played last year at 35:31 per game as well as 3-point accuracy at 44.5 percent (which was 10th nationally) while knocking down 81, second-most in the league.

Returning Academic All-American
James Foye was selected as a second-team Academic All-American last year, the first Big Green basketball player to earn the honor since Sea Lonergan took home second-team honors 22 years ago in 1996-97. An economics major with a 3.96 GPA, Foye had a breakout season last year, averaging 10.8 points on 42.9 percent shooting from 3-point range while starting all 30 games and recording a 3.0 assist-to-turnover ratio.

More Points, More Rebounds
Dartmouth managed to outscore and outrebound its opponents last year over the entire season, yet finished the 2018-19 campaign with a record of 11-19. Chalk that up to a 1-11 record in games decided by five or fewer points with eight of those defeats by no more than three points.

Ary-Turner Ready to Air It Out
Trevon Ary-Turner was with the Big Green all last year but was ineligible after transferring from Weber State. After a year of practicing with the team, expect the sophomore to see plenty of time off the bench right away this season as a sharp-shooter and distributor.

International Experience
Two members of the Big Green hail from outside of the United States — Isaac Letoa (New Zealand) and Aaryn Rai (Canada). Letoa even played for the New Zealand National Team (Junior Tall Backs), playing in the U19 FIBA World Championships in Cairo in July 2017.

Fresh Faces
Dartmouth welcomes six members of the Class of 2023 to bolster the roster. Jackson Blaufeld is a 6-4 guard from Pittsburgh who hit 209 3-pointers in his prep career. Forwards Paul Hudson (6-5 with a 7-5 wingspan) and Demi Adelekun (6-8, 230) are both from the Charlotte area and earned all-state honors, while another forward, Nate Ogbu (6-7, 210) was an all-state selection in Georgia. The tallest player in the class, 6-9 Cam Krystkowiak, played at Northfield Mount Hermon last year and is the son of nine-year NBA veteran Larry Krystkowiak. Rounding out the class is walk-on guard Jayden Reaves from New York City.