Hanover
Of specific concern was a defense that too often allowed the Stags to score on forays beyond the 3-point line. Fairfield’s “five-out” offense, in which no one occupies the paint, consistently sucked defenders away from the lane before victimizing them off the dribble.
“They spread us out pretty good,” said McLaughlin, hired earlier this year after the college canned predecessor Paul Cormier, who was 55-116 during a six-year stint. “In that situation, you have to trust your positioning, shrink the 3-point line and have help from the weak side.
“Our guys made the 3-point line look like it was at 16 feet rather than 21 feet.”
Said senior guard Mike Fleming: “Defense is going to be what defines us, and we can’t get too concerned about it yet. But I definitely noticed we had a lot of lapses tonight.”
Conversely, the arc at the Big Green’s offensive end must have appeared to be 30 feet, for after Guilien Smith scored the hosts’ first nine points on treys, they went 2-of-24 from 3-point range. Dartmouth is trying to play more of an up-tempo game but doesn’t have a natural point guard or a true center. Taylor Johnson started at the point on Tuesday and had four points, three assists and four turnovers in 18 minutes. Fleming played 22 minutes there and had three points, with no assists or turnovers.
McLaughlin thought the turning point came at the second half’s start, when Dartmouth had two turnovers and a missed shot during its first three possessions, leading to a pair of Fairfield 3-point buckets that pushed its lead to 14.
“When you’re trying to get back in a game, you can’t allow that to happen,” the coach said. “That was kind of a deflator for us. To come back from that, you have to have an edge defensively. But all of these are things we are trying to have define our program, and it’s going to be a process.”
Sophomore forward Evan Boudreaux, last season’s Ivy League rookie of the year, had 18 points, six rebounds and three turnovers but often seemed to expend too much energy for his points. Johnson and Smith each had 11 points. Starting swing man Miles Wright, a junior who scored a Leede Arena-record 39 points during last season’s home opener, had nine points and six rebounds.
“Miles commands a lot of (attention) from the defense,” McLaughlin said. “He has to make better decisions in either kicking the ball out or getting two feet down and getting to the foul line. He might be rushing his next decision when he has the ball.”
Boudreaux said the team is adjusting to a completely different style of basketball.
“We just have to know what we’re doing and execute,” he said. “We want to be faster, but be in control. It’s great to prepare for the Ivy League, but when we go out there five-on-five, we want to win.”
McLaughlin said he’s happy with the team’s practices thus far, although he noted they’ve only had 25 of them thus far.
“A lot of teams wouldn’t have practiced like we did after losing (the season opener) to Rhode Island,” he said. “They would have chalked it up as a loss to the No. 23 team and moved on. But we came out and practiced like it was a war.”
Notes: Fairfield improved to 2-0 this season and is 4-0 against the Big Green in the teams’ series. … Among the 433 in announced attendance was onetime Dartmouth assistant Paul “Doc” Donahue, who’s now helping to coach Hanover High’s unified basketball squad. … After last week’s season-opening loss at No. 23 Rhode Island, the Big Green is 3-54 against ranked teams. The last victory? An overtime result against West Virginia in the first round of the 1956 NCAA tournament. … Dartmouth is playing without a captain. … Word along press row was that Cormier is working to become a television game analyst.
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.