Big Green Open Season at Boston College

Tuesday, November 9

Chestnut Hill, Mass. / Conte Forum

8:00 PM

Dartmouth College

Boston College

The 2021-22 men's basketball team

Photo by: Gil Talbot

11/8/2021 9:05:00 PM | Men's Basketball

ACCNX Live Stats @DartmouthMBB Dartmouth Notes Boston College Notes

The men's basketball team plays for the first time in 20 months

By: Rick Bender

DARTMOUTH (0-0)
at BOSTON COLLEGE (0-0)
Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021 | 8 PM | ACCNX
Conte Forum | Chestnut Hill, Mass.

• Dartmouth will play its first game in 20 months as it opens up the 2021-22 season at Boston College on Tuesday night.
• The Big Green are under the guidance of head coach David McLaughlin, now in his sixth year (fifth season). He led Dartmouth to a 12-17 record in 2019-20 and a sixth-place finish in the Ivy League at 5-9.
• This is the sixth time in the last seven seasons that Dartmouth is opening the season on the road. The team earned its first opening-day win on the road in 32 years by defeating Buffalo, 68-63, ending the Bulls' 26-game home win streak in the process.
• The Big Green led by as many as 17 in the second half, but Buffalo battled back within one before Taurus Samuels scored six straight points in the final 1:12 to secure the upset victory.
• In the first 119 seasons of Dartmouth basketball, the program has posted a 78-41 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.

Meet Your Big Green
• There are many new faces gracing the roster this year. But there is one returning to Dartmouth after playing last year at Temple as a grad student, Brendan Barry, who was also a member of the Big Green team in McLaughlin's first season as the head coach.
• Of the 20 players on the roster, 10 have not played a collegiate game due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including F Cam Krystkowiak, son of nine-year NBA veteran Larry Krystkowiak. He missed his freshman season completely with an injury.
• Only five players have had even 100 minutes of action on the court as a collegiate player.
• Aaryn Rai is the leading returning scorer (11.2 ppg) and rebounds (6.4 rpg).
• Dartmouth returns about 40 percent of its production from the 2019-20 season — 44.8 percent of minutes, 38.9 percent of field goals, 39.3 percent of rebounds and points. But that does not include Barry who missed the season with an injury.
• The roster also has a more international flair with players from Bosnia and Herzegovina (F Dusan Neskovic), Sweden (G Romeo Myrthil) and Serbia (F Nikola Dimitrijevic) joining Rai, who hails from Canada.
• Other newcomers to the team are sophomores G Jaren Johnson, G Robert McRae III, Neskovic and G Izaiah Robinson, along with freshmen F Connor Christensen, G Ryan Cornish, Dimitrijevic, F Cade Haskins and Myrthil.
• Assistant coach Josh Einhorn has a familiarity with Boston College having served as a graduate manager there from 2018-20.

Series vs. Boston College
• The Eagles have won 22 of the 30 meetings with Dartmouth, dating back to a 60-13 Big Green victory in 1905.
• Boston College most recently handed the Big Green an 86-72 defeat on Jan. 13, 2018 as five Eagles scored in double figures, led by Ky Bowman's 19.
• Dartmouth still has two players on the squad that played in that game — Aaryn Rai who scored 11 points and Brendan Barry who added 10.
• The last Big Green victory in the series on the road came on Jan. 3, 1963, by a 58-50 final.
• Dartmouth is 0-7 at the Conte Forum since it opened in November of 1988.
• The Big Green are 18-66 against current ACC schools, with seven wins against Syracuse, and one each versus Miami, North Carolina and Pitt.

Scouting the Eagles
• Boston College, which was 4-16 in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season, has even less production returning than Dartmouth with about 30 percent of its scoring and 37 percent of its rebounding back.
• Fred Scott is the top returning Eagle with over 1,200 career points to his name while shooting nearly 40 percent from 3-point range.
• BC will also look to point guard Makai Ashton-Langford to run the offense after posting a 2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio last season.
• James Karnik is the man in the post as he averaged 6.8 points and 5.4 rebounds in 2020-21 for the Eagles after three years at Lehigh.
• Boston College will also likely rely on two more transfers in Brevin Galloway (College of Charleston) and T.J. Bickerstaff (Drexel), both of whom averaged double digits in scoring last year at their respective schools.
• The Eagles are under new management with Earl Grant being hired back in March as the head coach. Grant led College of Charleston to a top-four finish in the CAA each of the past five seasons, including regular-season and conference tournament championships in 2018.

Preseason Poll
How the Ivy League will shake out after not playing in 2020-21 is anyone's guess, but the media gave it their best shot by … plugging each team exactly where it finished the 2019-20 campaign. That means Dartmouth is picked to finish sixth in the eight-team Ancient Eight while Yale is expected to successfully defend their crown. I will say that five teams did receive at least two first-place votes to make things a little interesting. For the complete breakdown of the poll, turn the page and look at the bottom.

Barry the Three
With a one-year exemption in the Ivy League that allows graduate students to play at the school at which they earned their bachelor's degree, Dartmouth is happy to welcome back guard Brendan Barry. He spent his first four collegiate seasons at Dartmouth, but did not play in his senior year due to an injury. Then the pandemic settled in and the Ivy League canceled the 2020-21 season. So Barry went the grad transfer route and played at Temple last year, contributing 29 triples and 110 points to the Owls' cause. And since that season did not count toward his eligibility, he was able to transfer back to Dartmouth to finish out his collegiate career with the team that he ranks among the top 3-point shooters in program history.

Barry is looking to surpass 1,000 points for his career, both overall and at Dartmouth alone. He needs just 95 points to hit the mark as a collegiate player, and 205 to do so for the Big Green. Well-known as a sharp-shooter, Barry is the fifth-most accurate active 3-point shooter in Division I at 44.5 percent (188-of-421), with 159 of those trifectas made while in a Dartmouth uniform.

Rai-ght Back
Barry isn't the only player returning to the court past his four-year window. Aaryn Rai decided to stick with the Big Green and finish his collegiate career in Hanover as a fifth-year player. The Canadian native provided 11.2 points and a team-best 6.4 rebounds per game back in 2019-20 (sixth in the Ivy League). The 6-6 forward has a chance to reach 1,000 points for his career as well, though he's going to have to increase his junior year production as he needs nearly 400 points (or about 15 a game).

International Experience
Four members of the Big Green hail from outside of the United States — Aaryn Rai (Canada), Dusan Neskovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Romeo Myrthil (Sweden) and Nikola Dimitrijevic (Serbia). Neskovic is the first Big Green player from Banja Luka since Vedad Osmanovic '02, who scored 697 points thanks in large part to 141 3-pointers he swished. And the four international players are the most ever on the Dartmouth roster.

Big Green Bits
• Dartmouth has knocked down at least 200 3-pointers in each of its last three seasons, connecting on 201 in 2019-20 a year after hitting a school-record 264.
• While the Big Green have the four international players and nine states represented, none of the 20 on the roster hails from New England, though five come from California.
• Dartmouth will play schools from the ACC (BC), Big East (Georgetown) and Pac-12 (Stanford and California) this season in one of its most challenging slates in years.
• This will be the first season in which the Ivy League will not play on Friday and Saturday for six straight weeks during conference play. The schedule has been spread out with only three such weekends this year.