The Gospel According to Marcus
PLAY the game of comparing scores and you find out about the improbable world of college basketball. When Dartmouth arrived in Rochester for the Kodak Classic, the only thing that anyone really expected the Green to come home with was the gift camera that the Kodak folks present to all the participants.
Even the University of Rochester, paired against Dartmouth in the opening round, figured to have a breeze into the finals. The tournament was supposed to be locked up between Syracuse and Georgetown and when Georgetown pealed the Orange by a point in the opening round, the action, supposedly, was over.
Dartmouth? No chance. Especially after the Green lost high-scoring forward Adam Sutton two weeks earlier with a broken foot that still has him out of commission. For the past year, the story of Dartmouth's offense has been, "Let Adam do it." The wiry 6-foot, 5-inch junior from Chicago usually did all right, too, averaging close to 20 points a game and getting his share of rebounds.
Without him, the roof was supposed to collapse around Marcus Jackson and his beleaguered troops. But things took an unexpected turn at Harvard, a week before the Kodak festivities began. Without Sutton, Dartmouth built a nine-point lead with 12 minutes to play but managed only six points the rest of the way and the Crimson caught up to win, 64-62. Just two points. Was this the same team that had been beaten by an average of 20-plus by Massachusetts, Centenary, Vermont, and Holy Cross? Same personnel, yes. A different style of play? Yes, again. Jackson, the man charged with rebuilding a struggling program, concedes that it's harder to play a controlled, possession offense than it is to run, run, run.
But patience became Dartmouth's virtue. With sophomore guard John Lisowski taking control at the point, and with junior forward Jim Beattie picking up much of the offensive slack, the Green started to turn things around at Harvard. It was a loss, but it was close. The difference between winning and losing started to become a matter of confidence. "When you've forgotten how to win, you can get a lead and then forget the things you did that produced the lead. You stop playing," said Jackson. "That's what happened at Harvard."
Dartmouth didn't stop playing at Rochester. The Green, still running, built a 20-point lead in the second half and then held on at the end to win 96-90. A lot of points, a close call, but it was Jackson's first win at the Green helm. Ahead, however, was Georgetown with average height across the front of 6 feet 8 inches, and a loss only to Maryland prior to the tournament.
The Green sputtered through the first half and went to the lockers on the short end, 33-22. Second half: peck, peck, peck and with three minutes to play it was tied at 56. With barely two minutes to go, Lisowski made a foul shot and Dartmouth had the lead. Georgetown held for a last shot against Dartmouth's zone, finally taking a bad one. Lisowski steered the rebound to Bill Hooper and it was over.
Dartmouth, which hadn't won a tournament anywhere since Rudy La Russo and friends won the Queen City Tournament at Buffalo in 1958, came home with a great big trophy. "I never had any doubts," said Jackson. Whenever my team takes the floor, I expect a positive outcome. I'm not surprised when good things happen." Talk about the power of positive thinking....
While Dartmouth was doing its thing against Georgetown, St. John's was beating Providence (the top team in New England, coached by Dave Gavitt '59). A week later, Georgetown beat St. John's by four. You figure it out.
"To beat a team like Georgetown, a team that was supposed to finish us off in a hurry, really gives you confidence," said Beattie, who was voted the tournament's most valuable player and made the all- tourney team with Lisowski.
If anyone is playing with confidence atthis point, it's Beattie. The durable juniorcame flying out of the tournament and intothe early January game with Maine, hishome state university. Hitting the twistingshots that wouldn't fall a year ago, Beattiehad 34 points and 17 rebounds against theBears. He hit 13 of 19 from the floor, alleight of his foul shots, and was tremendousat every turn. It wasn't quite enough,however. Maine erased Dartmouth's ten-point halftime lead, survived a pair of foulshots by Lisowski with no time showing onthe clock to tie at 78, and won in overtime87-86.
The trip to Princeton and Pennproduced good performances but twolosses, 82-68 and 108-79, to the IvyLeague's best teams. For all of it, though,this team is playing the best "team"basketball that Dartmouth has seen in along, long time. The Green isn't going tohave a winning record, but it's going to wina few games — which is more than mostpeople would have dared hope two monthsago. It's a team that is starting to believethe gospel according to Marcus. It will beinteresting to see what happens when Sutton gets back into the lineup.
IF a Dartmouth team had aspirations of winning a holiday tournament, the bucks wouldn't have gone on basketball. Hockey, perhaps. But such is the winding athletic road. After starting the 1973-74 season with a verve normally reserved for the Stanley Cup finalists (they were 10-2-1 in mid-January), Dartmouth's skaters tailed off and lost seven straight.
After eight games this season, other than a 12-4 victory over a St. Mary's (Nova Scotia) team that showed up for the first annual Blue-Green holiday tourney at Mew Hampshire minus five players and the coach, Dartmouth is still looking for a win. It's been painful and no one, particularly Grant Standbrook and his legions, need be reminded.
"In essence, we're starting our season for the third time," said Standbrook prior to mid-January games with Vermont and Cornell. The Green dropped both of them, 6-2 to the impressive Vermonters who are in Division One for the first time after several years of obliterating most of their Division Two opposition, and 7-6 in overtime to Cornell in a marvelous game for the sellout Davis Rink crowd.
Dartmouth played four games from November 25 to December 4 and dropped them all (two by one goal). Then exams and no combat until the "second season" on December 29-30 - the Blue-Green event at Durham. The win over St. Mary's was a laugher, but a 3-1 loss to Pennsylvania in the championship game wasn't. Then another 11-day hiatus prior to the Vermont-Cornell weekend. Now the heat is on because it's all uphill against Division One opposition in a parade that continues into early March.
The last time Vermont played Dartmouth in hockey the Catamounts were a club team. It was in 1932 and Dartmouth won, 18-1. Times have changed. Vermont now skates with precision and makes few errors. It was a tough game for Dartmouth to face after a long layoff, and Vermont built a 4-0 lead into the second period before goals by Gordie Miles and Tom Fleming halved the edge as the third period began.
The Green could claim a territorial advantage in the final period, but Vermont scored the only goals of the period. Still, considering the extended layoff, it was a respectable performance and the next night, when Dave Ferguson deflected defenseman Kevin Downing's slap shot past the Cornell goalie after 16 seconds of play, it appeared the corner suddenly had been turned.
Dartmouth's top-scoring line - Fleming and wings Peter Quinn and Charlie Solberg - had been on the ice when Vermont scored five of its goals and Stand- brook let them think about that for most of the first period. It was 1-1 when they got their first shift. Bang! Quinn scored on a rebound and two minutes later Fleming had another. Dartmouth was rolling.
But wait: Cornell scored the next three to take the lead. But the Red edge lasted only six seconds as Ken Pettit, who is clearly the finest overall player on this team, tied the game and a minute later restored the lead on a power play feed from Fleming. It was a period that saw 12 penalties called as players preferred to play cute rather than play hockey.
Fleming's second goal of the night gave Dartmouth its last lead, 6-5, in the middle of the third period, but Cornell tied it with a power play goal at 18:10 and finally won it when Brian Campbell broke past the defense and had an all-alone crack at sophomore Jeff Sollows after six minutes of sudden death.
"That team has a 1-7 record?" said Cornell coach Dick Bertrand when it was over. "I don't believe it." Well, for the moment, it's a fact.
Out of the golf course fog, a pack of wearyracers closes on the finish of the 30-kilometer Hanover Relays, won by Dartmouth.
