Duke opens the season hosting Dartmouth.
Dartmouth finished 10-18 last season and 6-8 in the Ivy League. The Big Green were picked to finish seventh in the Ivy League this season, garnering 28 total votes in the preseason poll. The Big Green ended last season on a high note, beating Harvard for a third straight time, 87-82. Dartmouth finished last season 6-8 in Ivy League play, also picking up wins over the year prior’s Ivy League champion in Penn, eventual Sweet 16 qualifier Princeton and co-regular season champion Yale. In fact, the Big Green beat Princeton at home after a slim overtime defeat against the Tigers in New Jersey. With its second win over Harvard to finish last season, Dartmouth is now 10-9 over its last 19 Ivy League games spanning the end of 2021-22 and all of 2022-23. The Big Green own the third best record in the league against Ivy opponents in that span (since Feb. 17, 2022).
This year’s version of Dartmouth men’s basketball features plenty of returning talent. The Big Green lose leading scorer and rebounder Dame Adelekun. They return Ryan Cornish who is the team’s leading returning scorer from last season, after averaging 12.5 points per game in 2022-23. Cornish, entering his junior season, was 109-for-268 (.407) from the field and 39-of-121 (.322) from beyond the arc as a sophomore. Senior Dusan Neskovic wasn’t far behind with 12.2 points and 3.3 boards. Sophomore Brandon Mitchell-Day showed a lot of promise as a first year, which included efforts of 18 points vs. Bryant, 14 against Incarnate Word and 17 at Princeton, among six double-figure scoring efforts. Mitchell-Day was named Ivy League Rookie of the Week once last season, as was classmate Jackson Munro.
Head coach David McLaughlin enters his seventh season at the helm of the Dartmouth program. McLaughlin has a career record of 245-209 (.540) as head coach, having previously coached for 10 seasons at Stonehill.
Monday will mark the first-ever meeting between Dartmouth and Duke. The Blue Devils are coming off a 109-64 victory in Duke’s lone exhibition game of the preseason, the second ranked Blue Devils begin the 119th season of Duke men’s basketball on Monday night, welcoming Dartmouth to Cameron Indoor Stadium. In season openers, Duke is 91-27 all-time and has won 22 straight. The Blue Devils are coming off an undefeated home season, the 19th in program history, after going a perfect 16-0 inside Cameron Indoor Stadium last season. Duke returns 60.4 points per game from last season, the most returning points by a Duke team since the 2008-09 season, and four players with 30+ starts for the first time since the 2000-01 season (Shane Battier, Carlos Boozer, Nate James and Jay Williams).
Duke was selected to finish first in the ACC this season, as chosen by media members in their preseason predictions. The Blue Devils earned 44 of the 51 first-place votes and finished with 757 total points, leading Miami, North Carolina and Virginia atop the preseason poll.
Kyle Filipowski, a Preseason AP All-American, led the team in scoring (15.1) and rebounding (8.9) as a freshman and tallied 16 double-doubles — best by any Division I freshman in 2022-23. Filipowski was voted ACC Preseason Player of the Year in mid-October. The Blue Devils have three captains this season — Tyrese Proctor, Jeremy Roach and Ryan Young. Proctor is just the fourth sophomore captain in program history.
Thoughts
Duke will be heavily favored at home against the Big Green. Coach Jon Scheyer will use this early contest to solidify rotations and help prepare this team for huge upcoming games against Arizona and Michigan State. Things to look for are how this team fixes the mistakes that were apparent in their lone exhibition game. There were a few missed defensive rotations, the Blue Devils gave up a few open layups and were late on a few close-outs.
Offensively the Blue Devils didn’t turn the ball over much at all but there are still quite a few new additions to this team that are still learning how to play together and with the returning veterans. Duke displayed some impressive ball movement in their lone action of the season and as promised played a much faster pace than last season and with the uptick in the level of competition it will be key for the Blue Devils to continue their offensive efficiency.
