A Princeton Basketball Stunner

Before anything football, a basketball shocker. Princeton coach Joe Scott, a former Tiger captain and architect of the Air Force Academy renaissance, is leaving Old Nassau after three years to take over the struggling program at Denver, hardly a plum job. From a Trenton Times column:

The day he was introduced as head coach, taking over a team that had won the league under Thompson, and returned all five starters, he proclaimed his goal was to get the Tigers back into the top 20.

Three years later, he was losing to Dartmouth, twice.

Hard to tell whether Joe Scott or Dartmouth takes the bigger hit with that shot. ... I'm reminded of something a Dartmouth basketball coach once told me when I said something about how much easier it must be to coach at a place like Princeton, where you are almost guaranteed an Ivy League championship half the time. He wasn't so sure. He said to imagine what it's like coaching at a place where regardless of your record, if you don't win the championship the season is considered a failure.

I guess we don't have to imagine anymore.

Princeton doesn't seem likely to go "out of the family" to hire its new coach, but former Dartmouth assistant Mike Maker might be someone Princeton Athletic Director Gary Walters (a former Dartmouth basketball coach) should consider. Maker coached a version of the "Princeton system," under Dave Faucher at Dartmouth for many years. When he left, it was to be an assistant at Samford, which has had success running an even purer version of the Pete Carril system. He's now at West Virginia, which has been acclaimed for its version of the Princeton system. Beyond that, "Makes" is the kind of people person who would be able to heal some of the open wounds in New Jersey.

The Harvard Crimson has a story today about the eating habits of football linemen. (I wish I could post the hilarious story I wrote for the newspaper several years ago about how Dartmouth O-linemen eat, but the paper wouldn't look kindly upon it.) The Crimson story includes this amusing bit:

(Junior lineman Tom) Rodger recalls his brother, former Crimson lineman Will Rodger ’05, saying “I go into Annenberg, and sit there and eat until I sweat. That’s when I know I’m done.”

To get a sense of who the Dartmouth football team will see on the other side of the field for the next few years -- barring a schedule change -- check out this announcement of the Holy Cross recruiting class. It would be a surprise if a few of the names on the list weren't Dartmouth recruiting targets at one point in the process.

Old friend Jim Fiore, the forward-looking athletic director at Stony Brook, has the Seawolves joining the Big South conference for football according to this release. While the geographical part of it is a little curious (SBU will be playing games at places like Coastal Carolina, Charleston Southern and VMI) it's clearly a step up for Stony Brook. There was talk that Albany would also join the league, but that may just have been a rumor.