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 green and white really were Doggie colors.
Boston Celtics fans know Alvin “Doggie” Julian as the coach that preceded Red Auerbach, but Julian made a more memorable name for himself with the Indians (they weren’t the Big Green until 1974).
Julian coached Dartmouth for 17 seasons from 1950 through 1967, winning back-to-back Ivy League titles after the formation of the modern Ivy League in 1956. Dartmouth went 76-27 and 44-12 in conference play in the Ivy League’s first four seasons, never finishing lower than second. Dartmouth nabbed a NCAA East Regional Final appearance in 1958, led by Rudy LaRusso.
Dartmouth wasn’t the same in the 1960s, though, as the team finished last in the league in each of Julian’s final five seasons, winning just two of its final 56 Ivy games. Still, Julian left the program in 1967 following a midseason stroke as the team’s all-time winningest coach with a 185-251 record. Julian, who died in July 1967 in Vermont, still owns that record, and he was posthumously inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach in 1968.
The Big (name your color) is a pathetic excuse for a mascot. Personally, I don’t see anything offensive about the Indians. But, since it is done, I nominate The Green Bacteria as Dartmouth’s new mascot.