Honestly, on any other Friday I would be at this basketball game against Cornell from start to finish. But as someone who played hockey for most of his childhood and an avid fan of the game, I'm still torn between the Dartmouth-Cornell game and the Dartmouth-Princeton matchup down the road in Thompson Arena.
So why on Earth would someone go to the Princeton hockey game over the Cornell basketball game on Friday? Here's some reasons: some good, some bad, some pointless.
First is tradition. I mentioned this in my last column (didn't you read it? It was on Monday, in the Sports Weekly ... okay, forget it) that the Dartmouth-Princeton hockey game includes one of the few enduring Big Green sports rituals -- the tennis balls.
For the uninitiated amongst you, every year when the Big Green plays the Tigers in Hanover, the fans unleash a barrage of tennis balls onto the ice after Dartmouth's first goal of the game. It's one of the coolest things you'll see at a Dartmouth sporting event, with students tossing bouncy green balls, all in unison, onto the ice. Everyone goes nuts, the cleaning crew is forced to come in to gather all the balls, and Dartmouth gets handed a bogus two-minute penalty. Just please, find a good place to hide the tennis balls as you walk in -- the College has tried to crack down on this (even moving this game to Thanksgiving break two years ago). You only get four chances to do this as an undergrad -- make them count.
Second, the basketball game pits two of the top teams in the Ivy League against one another, with Cornell holding the top spot and Dartmouth sitting in a three-way tie for second place. But in the grand scheme of Division I basketball, Ivy League teams stink, and they're only ever competitive against one another.
The Dartmouth-Princeton hockey game, on the other hand, features two of the best teams in the nation battling for playoff position as the season draws to a close. The Tigers are No. 6 in the nation in the latest USCHO.com poll, while the Big Green just recently fell out of the top 20, and Dartmouth needs to win its last two games to secure a first-round bye in the ECAC Hockey League playoffs (which determines the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament). High-quality hockey and a potential upset by Dartmouth versus mediocre basketball?
Next is something I'll dub the "disappointment factor." Dartmouth basketball lost a double-overtime heartbreaker to Cornell in Ithaca, N.Y., a few weeks ago, and now the Big Red comes to Hanover trying to secure a season sweep over the Big Green. I know Cornell is on the road, but I have this sinking feeling that the Big Red team is out to prove a point that it is the unquestioned power in the League, and will be too much for the Big Green to overcome.
Sure, we've won a fair share of games, but a lot of them have been close and against some really bad teams (e.g. Brown, who Cornell demolished by 40 points last week). If Dartmouth loses -- and I think we will -- the season is over right then and there. Do you really want to put a damper on your night like that? Hockey has a much better chance of winning, considering we already killed the Tigers 4-0 at Princeton. Optimism abounds.
To be honest -- it's way too hard to compete with the compelling storyline running through the basketball games this weekend. But the Princeton hockey game is a special occasion in the realm of Dartmouth sports, and no true fan should pass that up. At the very least, go to the hockey game, throw the tennis balls, and then if the basketball game is close, go to Leede and watch the end.
