There are times during a game when Gregg Frame '94 looks like he might charge if someone were to wave a piece of red cloth in front of him.
It's generally just after he's sent an opposing point guard, or anyone foolish enough to get in his way as he bangs in towards the basket, sprawling to the floor.
It's at these times when you notice Frame's chin, which looks like it was carved straight from the granite of New Hampshire, or one of his knees, which somehow always seems to have a trickle of blood oozing down it, or his shoulders, which have NFL linebacker written all over them.
A goatee - that scruffy patch of hair that comes and goes as his razor dulls - completes the neo-Neanderthal look for the 6-foot-3, 210 pound... point guard?
No, the point guard part just doesn't fit. Gregg Frame, the men's basketball team's captain, looks about as much like a point guard as a ballerina looks like a bouncer.
He doesn't play like one either. Point guards are supposed to be impish little beings that dart about and generally avoid anything that might produce a shoving match for position.
Frame, on the other hand, delights in posting up, banging elbows, or doing anything to smash the stereotypes that come with the label of point guard. In any given night, three-quarters of his points will come from the inside, and he is once again leading the team in rebounding (5.7 boards per game) as he did in his sophomore season.
But, then again, maybe he is a point guard. That same Gregg Frame that muscles into the paint with the tall timbers is also just as likely to fire a perfect pass to a wide open man underneath the basket for an assist - a trick he turns with such regularity that he is second in the Ivy League in assists with 5.7 per game.
And then he's got that unconventional shooting stroke - as ugly as it may sometimes be - that seems to find its mark more often than it looks like it should. Although a lot of his shots are taken five feet away from the hoop, he still manages to nail 45 percent of his tries from the floor, and 38 percent from beyond the three-point arc. His 14.2 points a game lead Dartmouth and are tied for fourth in the Ivy League.
So what exactly is Frame?
"Well, he's a guard," explained Coach Dave Faucher, "but he posts up. So maybe he's a power forward? Then he'll come down and make a nice dish and he's definitely a point guard. Then he'll knock someone down to get a rebound - he's a power forward. The next thing he's hitting the jump shot, so maybe he's a swing guard."
Frame seems to be little assistance in clearing up the controversy himself.
"I guess I've always kind of been like a center," Frame said. "Or maybe a point center."
Or maybe he's just an anomaly.
Frame has always defied common basketball wisdom. He's not very quick, yet no one seems to be able to dribble by him. He doesn't jump very well, yet he grabs more than his fair share of rebounds. His shot has about as much arc as a 35 millimeter bullet, yet he goes on streaks where he can't miss it.
As paradoxical as it all seems in the abstract, Frame manages to pull it all together and has willed himself into becoming one of the Ivy League's top performers.
He led Dartmouth in scoring (11.3 points per game) and rebounding his sophomore season and was second on the team with 12.6 points and 5.1 rebounds a game his junior year.
This season, Frame is the only Ivy League player to be among the league's top-10 in scoring, rebounding, assists and field goal percentage. After last night's game against Boston University - a 73-70 Dartmouth win that snapped a 10-game losing skid - he is just 21 points shy of his 1,000th career point.
Over the last seven games, Frame has averaged nearly 19 points a game and has broken the 20-point barrier four times. Against Vermont on Dec. 28, he notched Dartmouth's first triple double (28 points, 11 rebounds, 11 assists) since 1987.
Still, the 1993-94 men's basketball season - all two wins and 12 losses of it - could hardly be considered a dream senior season.
"If I drew it up, I wouldn't want to be 2-12 at this point in the season. But, on the other hand..." Frame's voice suddenly trailed off. "I don't know what's on the other hand, but in a couple of years, this team is going to be something."
"The pleasure I get from this season will be in coming back and seeing how good we're going to be," Frame said.
Indeed, much of Frame's role this year has revolved around bringing along a talented six-pack of freshmen.
"Gregg is as great a competitor as I have ever played with," said the Big Green's seven-foot center, Chris Butler '97. "It's easy to come into a program and see what is expected of you in terms of hard work when you see the captain go out every day working as hard as anybody while diving for every loose ball. He is the type of player that leads by example, not by his words."
But on the floor his words can at least be entertaining. Frame has always enjoyed bantering - some call it trash talking - with other players. In the game in which he garnered the triple-double and was all but unstoppable on offense, he admonished Vermont's George Roberson, saying, "George, you better tell your coach to find someone else to cover me, because you sure can't."
And although his words may sometimes be flashy, his play never is.
Maybe that's why he was never heavily recruited out of high school. Frame average 26 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists a game - which all led his conference - and was named Central Maine Player of the Year his senior year, but received little attention from recruiters.
At Phillips Exeter, which Frame attended for a year after high school, he led the New England prep school league averaging 31 points a game. Still, only Dartmouth and Williams College showed any interest.
In fact, the only reason Frame caught Dartmouth's eye was that he scored 43 points in a game scouted by Faucher (at that time an assistant coach), who had shown up to check out Frame's teammate.
"He came up here when he was at Phillips Exeter and played a game against our J.V. team," Faucher recalled. "He missed his first six shots of the game, and then he went on to score 36 points and get 17 rebounds."
Seventeen rebounds ... that would make him a center, right?
