In the last 10 days, Dave McLaughlin has rewatched every possession the Dartmouth men’s basketball team has played this season.
McLaughlin has had the chance to scrutinize his team’s performance at a granular level because his players have been off doing some studying of their own, wrapping up fall term finals. With that hiatus has come little practice but plenty of time for reflection.
The fourth-year coach of Dartmouth men’s basketball has the Big Green off to a 5-1 start, the program’s best outset since the 1996-97 season.
But while the early success has been great, Dartmouth will now face its toughest test of the season: three straight road games against non-conference opponents that all won 20-plus games a season ago.
McLaughlin’s squad has beaten a quality opponent — Buffalo — but not three in a row. Mixing in the road trip will test the Big Green’s depth and offer a glimpse into how the team will handle Ivy League weekends.
“You can take some time to tweak a few things, look at where you’re working on and get a better look at what you think you can do,” he said Monday afternoon in his office at Leede Arena. “Maybe your guys are coming in just for skill work. Make sure that they’re still doing their lifting, flexibility.
“Academics is always a priority, and during finals, obviously, it becomes possibly more of a priority, but the guys still need to release every day. So having a chance to come down here and compete against each other, get over to the weight room — it only helps them in their study habits.”
The road trip starts Saturday afternoon at Bowling Green. The Falcons are off to a 5-2 start to the season. Picked to win the Mid-American Conference, Bowling Green has experience in their backcourt with Dylan Frye and Justin Turner.
Frye is a threat from beyond the arc and will be a good test for Dartmouth’s freshman point guard Taurus Samuels. Samuels has been thrust into the starting role due to senior Brendan Barry’s hip injury.
“They play older guards. When you look at a team, that’s the first thing you look at, how good is the backcourt, how old is it,” McLaughlin said. “They have a really old, experienced backcourt and they’re the leaders on the court. Plus, they’re good. So it’s going to be a great challenge for us come next week.”
With winter break underway, the Big Green won’t travel back to Hanover after the trip to Ohio. Instead, Dartmouth will fly from Ohio to Atlanta and stay in the city until its matchup with Georgia State on Tuesday night. The Blue Panthers nearly beat Duke earlier in the season and are owners of two of the last three Sun Belt Conference championships.
Then the Big Green will close out the southern swing with a visit Friday to South Florida. The Bulls finished with 24 wins last season and won the College Basketball Invitational.
The trip against tougher competition will give McLaughlin a chance to see how junior Chris Knight, who leads Dartmouth with 12.4 points per game, handles defenses homing in on him.
“I’m excited for Chris to get to play good basketball,” McLaughlin said. “Whether that means the score of a certain number of points or whether that means he’s being an anchor for us on the defensive end, or that means he’s the best communicator on the floor. Time will tell how he impacts the game. What Chris needs to understand, and he does, is that he can impact the game almost any possession.”
Pete Nakos can be reached at (603) 727-3306 or pnakos@vnews.com.