Ben Brown

Dartmouth men’s basketball’s squeaker win over New Hampshire underscores room for improvement

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New Hampshire and Dartmouth tip off Dec. 3, 2025 at Leede Arena for what became a 69-68 Big Green win. (Ray Curren | Ivy Hoops Online)

HANOVER, N.H. – The Dartmouth men’s basketball team miraculously escaped an upset from in-state rival New Hampshire Wednesday night by scoring the game’s final nine points, with Kareem Thomas’ runner with 5.5 seconds left holding up for a 69-68 win.

The Big Green (3-3) looked disjointed for most of the evening, particularly on the offensive end, and there will likely need to be several areas of improvement if Dartmouth is to follow up on last season’s inaugural Ivy League Tournament bid.

But that’s not a surprise to them. With Ryan Cornish now graduated, others like senior Brandon Mitchell-Day and sophomore Connor Amundsen (who was also injured to start the campaign) have seen the brunt of opposing defenses’ attention, especially Amundsen, who at 5-foot-11 and 165 pounds is a clear target for teams like New Hampshire that have good size at the guard position.

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Dartmouth men’s basketball momentum mounting after thrashing Cornell, 88-49

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Cornell and Dartmouth tip off at Leede Arena Saturday for what became an 88-49 win for the Big Green over the Big Red. (Ray Curren | Ivy Hoops Online)

HANOVER, N.H. – The hottest men’s basketball team in the Ivy League is Dartmouth.

Any controversy in the above statement lies only because of the school in question. The results speak for themselves, the latest an absolute obliteration of Cornell, 88-49, Saturday night at Leede Arena.

Dartmouth’s fourth straight win (by an average of 22.8 points) vaults them into solo second place in the Ivy League, heights the Big Green haven’t seen in the 21st century (and not too much before that, either). And at the moment Dartmouth looks like the main threat to Yale repeating its conference title in March, a strong statement from a team that hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 1959 and was picked dead last nearly unanimously in the preseason Ivy poll.

But, again, the facts and results speak for themselves. All that’s left is for David McLaughlin to channel Lou Brown and declare, “We’re contenders now.”

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