Dartmouth Face Yale, Brown on the Road This Weekend

DARTMOUTH (11-13, 2-6)
at YALE (17-4, 7-1)
and BROWN (15-9, 3-5)
Friday/Saturday, Feb. 22/23, 2019 | 7/6 PM | ESPNews and ESPN3/ESPN+
Lee Amphitheater (2,532)/Pizzitola Sports Center (2,800) | New Haven, Conn./Providence, R.I.

• After two heartbreaking losses at Penn and Princeton last weekend, Dartmouth looks to regroup against the Ivy League's leader in Yale and a Brown team that handed the Big Green a two-point loss three weeks ago.
• Five of Dartmouth's six conference losses this season have been by five points or fewer, and four have been one-possession games.
• The Big Green are looking for a similar finish to the season as they had four years ago when they won their final five contests to finish the regular season at .500 both overall and in the Ivy League.
• Brendan Barry had a big game at Princeton with 26 points thanks to matching a career high with 10 field goals, including a 4-for-7 night behind the arc to boost his season 3-point accuracy to 47.7 percent, seventh among Division I players.
• The previous night at Penn, Chris Knight led Dartmouth with 25 points (on a career-high 11 field goals), five rebounds and three steals, not to mention his four assists in the first Big Green overtime game in over a year.
• Knight ranks fifth in the league in scoring (16.1 ppg), rebounding (7.2 rpg) and blocks (1.4 bpg).
• As a team, Dartmouth is shooting 39.0 percent from distance, 16th in the country and the team's highest since 2001-02 (.392).

Series vs. Yale
• Dartmouth has played the Bulldogs 213 times with Yale holding the advantage over the Green, 115-98.
• Yale has won the last seven meetings since Dartmouth denied the Bulldogs the outright Ivy League title in the final game of the 2014-15 season.
• Three weeks ago, Yale shot nearly 60 percent from the floor in sending the Green to an 89-68 defeat at Leede Arena as Miye Oni went for 31 points while Chris Knight (20) and Adrease Jackson (18) led the Dartmouth effort.
• The Bulldogs have won 10 of the past 12 games with eight of those wins by double figures.
• Dartmouth is 28-56 all-time against Yale at Lee Amphitheater. The Green also played an Ivy playoff game here in 1959, beating Princeton, 69-68.
• Yale has won 31 of the 39 meetings this millennium and not lost consecutive games since 1999.

Scouting the Bulldogs
• Yale sits atop of the league with a 7-1 record and is 17-4 overall with its lone loss in league play coming at Harvard.
• Since that setback, the Bulldogs have won five straight .
• Five players are averaging in double figures for a Bulldog team that tops the Ivy in scoring (81.0 ppg) and field goal percentage (.493).
• Miye Oni does a bit of everything as the team's leading scorer (18.3 ppg) and playmaker (3.8 assists per game) and shot blocker (1.5 per game) while ranking second in rebounds (6.7 rpg).
• Jordan Bruner is another explosive athletic player with 11.0 ppg and 8.1 rpg, third in the league.
• Point guard Alex Copeland makes everything run smoothly, providing 12.0 ppg while handing out 3.0 assists a night.
• Blake Reynolds (10.5 ppg, .536 FG pct.) and Paul Atkison (10.3 ppg, .717 FT pct.) are other scoring threats for the Bulldogs, as Dartmouth discovered last game when Reynolds hit 7-of-7 field goals with three treys for 17 points.
• Head coach James Jones (Albany '86), the longest tenured Ivy League coach in his 20th year, picked up his 300th career win our weeks ago and enters this games with an overall record of 305-269. Three years ago he led the Bulldogs to 23 wins, a league title and their first victory in the NCAA Tournament ever.

Series vs. Brown
• Dartmouth holds an 81-77 lead in the all-time series against the Bears, dating back to their first game 117 years ago in 1902 (which the Big Green won, 70-14).
• Dartmouth needs a win in this game to salvage a season split with Brown for the sixth straight year having lost by two points three weeks ago, 60-58.
• The last six games have been decided by five points or less with the Bears winning four times.
• Chris Knight has averaged 15 points in three appearances against Brown, and had 15 earlier this year, but the Big Green were undone in that game by a season-high 20 turnovers.
• At the Pizzitola Sports Center, Dartmouth has an 11-18 record but just two wins in the last 13 years.
• Head coach David McLaughlin has a 2-3 mark against the Bears in his tenure at Dartmouth.

Scouting the Bears
• Brown, which began the season with a 12-4 mark, has struggled a bit during Ivy play at 3-5, though it has won two of its last three.
• The Bears' best wins this year were a 71-69 home win over Stony Brook and an 82-61 thumping of San Diego State on the road.
• Brown bottled up the Big Green's 3-point shooting in the first meeting (25 percent) and have held opponents to a league-low 30.1 percent all year.
• Desmond Cambridge leads the team at 16.0 ppg but has shot just 21.2 percent from the floor and 17.4 percent from downtown in league play.
• Tamenang Choh is averaging a double-double in the league at 15.1 ppg and 10.3 rpg, plus has given out a team-high 28 assists in the eight games.
• Obi Okolie is one of the Bears' steadiest players, providing 11.4 ppg on the season while hitting 48.5 percent of his field goals.
• Zach Hunsaker is a long-distance threat having hit 12-of-27 (.444) from deep in conference play.
• Mike Martin (Brown '04) is in his seventh season at the helm with a 88-109 record. He spent six years on the staff at Penn before returning to the team he led to three second-place finishes as a player.

ESPNews-Worthy
The Dartmouth-Yale game will be televised by ESPNews, just the third time the Big Green have ever been featured in a men's basketball game on one of the ESPN television networks. Last year, Dartmouth gave Notre Dame all it could handle on ESPNU in a 97-87 loss as the Green hit 15 3-pointers and five players scored in double figures with Brendan Barry recording the lone double-double of his career — 10 points and 12 assists. The only other ESPN game came 35 years ago when Dartmouth lost to a Michael Jordan-led North Carolina team, 103-58, as the Tar Heels shot 75 percent.

Palestra-Jadwin Heartbreak
The trip to Penn and Princeton has historically been a nightmare for Dartmouth. In the first 62 seasons, the Big Green had been swept 51 times, and they unfortunately added to that ignominious total in nightmarish fashion. First, the Penn game went into overtime, ending in an 82-79 loss, and then Princeton nipped Dartmouth, 69-68, dropping the Big Green's record to 3-47 at Jadwin Gym. This was just the fifth time that Dartmouth lost both games by single digits, and the fewest combined points (4) while suffering a sweep on this trip.

Starting Points
In the 69-68 loss at Princeton, all 68 Big Green points came from the starting five, led by Brendan Barry with 26 while James Foye added 17, the most for each player since mid-December. The last time Dartmouth played a game without a reserve scoring? That was little more than 18 years ago in a one-point victory, 57-56, over Princeton at home.

Barry Bounces Back
After hitting just 1-of-8 3-point attempts at Penn on Feb. 15 — just the second time he had missed seven threes in a game — Brendan Barry was back to his sharp-shooting ways the very next night, drilling 4-of-7 from behind the arc en route to a game-high 26 points at Princeton. Barry boosted his season percentage back to .477, which ranks seventh among Division I players. And his 74 3-pointers are the most by a Big Green player in 20 years.

Rai-ght on Target
Sophomore Aaryn Rai has not missed a single free throw attempt in Ivy League action this season, going 2-of-2 at Princeton to boost his total to 15 made this season. Going back to last year, his streak in conference play is 16, and in his career he has knocked down 22-of-26 (.846) in Ivy games and 46-of-58 (.793) overall at the charity stripe. But the longest current streak of free throws made belongs to Guilien Smith, who hasn't missed in nearly two years (albeit only 24 free throws).

Sistaring It Out
Junior Ian Sistare began the year on fire from long range, flirting with 50 percent accuracy entering Ivy League play (28-of-58, .483). But in the first five conference contests, he was just 3-of-15 behind the arc. That started to change in the 82-66 win over Columbia when he hit 2-of-3 from deep, then nearly doubled his league total with four triples in just six tries at Penn for a 16-point performance, his largest scoring output in the calendar year.

Knight Draws a Quarter
Drawn and quartered is kind of a medieval thing, and Chris Knight has a medieval kind of last name, so work with me on this. The 6-7 sophomore drew up a quarter — 25 points — at Penn with a career-high 11 field goals

Lighting It Up
• Dartmouth has hit at least five 3-pointers in every game this year and enters the weekend 16th in 3-point percentage (.390) and 27th in the country in triples per game (9.7).
• Twelve of the 14 players on the active roster have recorded at least one 3-pointer, and the two that haven't made one have attempted a total of three from the perimeter.
• In half of the first 24 games, the Big Green have hit at least 10 treys. That is second only to the 2001-02 squad that hit double digits 16 times.
• The Big Green are well on pace to shatter the program record of 263 3-pointers made — set in that same 2001-02 season — with 233 treys after 24 games. At the current rate, Dartmouth would finish the regular season with 291.
• Dartmouth started the year with four straight games with at least 10 3-pointers, its longest such streak since a six-game stretch in 2002.
• The Big Green hit 22 trifectas in the season opener, breaking the team record of 18 set in a win over Albany on Jan. 20, 2001.
• Dartmouth has had 15 or more 3-pointers in a game three times this season after reaching that total just four times previously since the 3-point line was instituted in 1986-87.

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