CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. – There is a lot of reason for optimism with Dartmouth, and two straight recruiting classes like the ones they have pulled in will make that happen. But what usually happens at first is youth being served, as well as growing pains, and it is quite clear that this group is going through that right now as they head home with a 2-9 record after Monday’s 79-58 loss at Boston College.
Dartmouth is young, with just one junior and a little-used senior on the roster. The core of this team for the present and foreseeable future will be the recruiting classes of the past two years. The young players come with plenty of talent, but rarely does that translate into instant success. With a challenging, road-heavy non-league slate, they have also been humbled in their introduction to college basketball. However, this team also shapes up as one that other Ivy League teams will not want to play in February. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see them knock off a contending team at home sometime in the final weeks of the regular season.
But getting to that point won’t be easy, and head coach Paul Cormier has laid out the challenge to them.
“You grow from these experiences,” said Cormier. “Right now, we’re 2-9, and our attitude has to be based on that being 10 percent – 10 percent of where you go from here is what’s happened to you, 90 percent of it is what you make of it.”
There are plenty of pieces on this team, and you can see that looking at Monday’s lineup. The only upperclassman to start was junior Tyler Melville. Alex Mitola will probably be a four-year starting point guard when it’s all said and done, and he currently leads the team in scoring. He has to get stronger and has an unorthodox shooting stroke, but lately he has been hitting a higher percentage of shots. There are some little things he has to learn as well, and there is reason to believe he will.
“He’s starting to come into his own,” said Cormier. “He obviously needs some strength. Sometimes I think he goes around contact – if there’s a hard hedge, rather than challenging it, going into it and tapping the top shoulder like we talk about and getting a foul, he tries to go around it and takes us out of offense.”
What needs to happen now is growth from an intangible standpoint and some consistency among the players. Cormier said there are about 4-5 players right now he feels he can hang his hat on, and he likes the others but hasn’t seen enough consistency out of them yet. The inconsistency even happens in practice since the players have yet to fully realize that is a necessary component to being able to compete. The ability isn’t in question, just the realization of what it takes. Their opposite number on Monday went through these kinds of growing pains last year and some of this year as well.
Forward Connor Boehm has been playing well of late and had 16 points and eight boards on Monday. Gabas Maldunas didn’t start on Monday but is unquestionably a key piece, as he has plenty of talent and fundamentals but has been inconsistent. Classmates Jvonte Brooks and John Golden, the latter of whom is close to being a third double-digit scorer, are showing progress although Brooks got into some early foul trouble on Monday. Freshman point guard Malik Gill has taken better care of the ball of late, while classmate Tommy Carpenter is very versatile but missed two games recently due to injury.
Dartmouth concluded a stretch of eight straight games on the road, and ahead are four straight at home. The Big Green won just one game in that stretch, but have a chance to get a little momentum before Ivy League play with the home stretch that includes the Ivy opener against Harvard on January 12. If they start to turn a corner with this home stretch, they will be a tough out in February and March.
This group is probably a year or so away from contending in the Ivy League. It won’t be a matter of simply getting older, as they will need to mature as well as get older. How they grow and fare the rest of this season will give an idea of what this team’s ceiling may be next year, as the growing pains and lessons on how to win in college continue.
