And In Non-Basketball News ...

As they say in this part of the country, it's "wicked early," for the names of potential recruits for the class of 2014 to start bubbling to the surface. Lots, and lots of high school juniors get mail from colleges at this time of year (and we know that well here on the shoulder of Moose Mountain ;-). That said, they don't all get mentioned on recruiting sites as hearing from Dartmouth, so ... keep the name Moses Richardson in mind. Richardson is a 5-foot-8, 165-pound running back from Pinewood Preparatory School in South Carolina. He told Scout.com:

“Right now I’m getting letters from a couple of Ivy League schools,” Richardson said. “Those schools are Harvard, Dartmouth, Columbia, Cornell, and Princeton. Rutgers has been sending me some stuff also.”

From the release on a 14-8 Dartmouth men's lacrosse loss to Brown Saturday:

Jimmy Mullen (Mt. Lebanon, Pa.) responded quickly, recording his team-leading ninth goal of the season just 27 seconds later on the man advantage.

Mullen, of course, was the senior wide receiver who opened eyes while playing football for the first time as a collegian last fall.

There's a lot of talk about who Dartmouth might pick up as an opponent when the current football scheduling contracts run out. One of the schools mentioned most prominently is Georgetown and there was even speculation in the fall that the Big Green was close to an arrangement that would result in two games in DC. While almost any schedule change would be good, and finally getting out of the Northeast would be fun, by many accounts games at Georgetown are lacking in college football atmosphere. Consider this from a poster on the HoyaTalk message board:

Student support is decent for a temporary 2,400 seat arrangement with no amenities, but the losses really wears away the student crowds by season's end. Still, the team averages about 2,000 a game (including us out of towners) and between the poor record, the lack of parking, and the lack of any marketing whatsoever, that's about as good as you could expect right now. Tailgating is restricted to one game a year because of parking lot problems.

And finally, a couple of basketball notes in honor of March Madness. From ESPN.com:
2009 NCAA tournament:

By the numbers
63 -- It's been 63 years since Harvard appeared in the NCAA tournament. That's the longest drought for any team that has previously played in the Big Dance. Back in 1946, the Crimson lost to Ohio State, and then lost again to NYU in a regional third-place game. In terms of long tournament droughts, the Ivy League is the place to look. After Harvard, the next two longest droughts belong to Dartmouth (50 years) and Yale (37).

Blame Princeton and Penn for a large part. ...

And a Maryland blogger's pretty fair analysis of the No. 1 seed Terrapins' game today against the Dartmouth women's team in the women's NCAA can be found here. The game can be seen (at least part of it) on ESPN at 2:30 p.m. eastern.