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 Rachel Dratch, Buck Henry and Mindy Kaling all went there. Comedy cred for all time right there.
Continuing on from our previous Dartmouth all-time moment, another Jim Barton-focused item, we turn to Barton’s place as the second-greatest scorer in Ivy League history.
Barton graduated after four seasons in 1989 having scored 2,158 points, second only to Bill Bradley (who scored 2,503 in just three seasons). Barton’s career clip of 20.7 points per game ranks second in school history (behind Paul Erland ’72) and ninth in league history, a clip that not a single player in the conference has matched since then.
Barton also led the league in scoring in 1987-88 and 1988-89, only the fifth player ever to do so in back-to-back seasons. He was a lethal three-point scoring threat once the trey was instituted after his freshman season in 1986, and he held the record for three-pointers in a season until Cornell’s Ryan Wittman surpassed it in 2010. (Barton does still hold the record for treys made in conference play in a season, though.). Also, Barton’s 89.5 percent free throw shooting clip was best in league history when he graduated, surpassed only by Columbia’s Brian Barbour upon his graduation in 2013.
After graduating, Barton went on to become head of portfolio risk management at Southeastern Asset Management in the Memphis area.
A master shooter from anywhere on the court, Barton will be known at excelling at certain facets of the game like no other Ivy standout before him, and providing Dartmouth with great league success, as the Big Green finished second in the league in Barton’s junior and senior seasons after going just 5-21 in the season prior to Barton’s arrival. In Jim Barton’s case, the numbers don’t lie.