We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Dartmouth is next because Keggy the Keg said so.
Paul Cormier has been good for Dartmouth.
In two coaching stints in Hanover, Cormier has turned the program around twice, with a quarter-century between his two program revivals.
Cormier first took over the Big Green in 1984 after serving as a Villanova assistant for four years under Rollie Massimino. Dartmouth went just 5-21 in his first season but achieved 10-win, second-place finishes in Ivy play in Cormier’s fourth and fifth seasons at the helm, a tremendous uptick for the Big Green.
Cormier left for Fairfield in 1991 and returned to Hanover in 2010, and history has repeated itself. The Big Green again won just five games in Cormier’s first season back and again have turned it around from there, making the program’s first postseason appearance since 1959 this past season.
It’s not often that a coach gets to enjoy two tours of duty at the same school, but Cormier has pulled it off admirably in Hanover, winning in a notoriously difficult to recruit by stacking his rosters with hard-nosed players who consistently deliver.