After defeating Brown University on March 1, Ryan Cornish ’25 strolled into the players’ lounge for the postgame press conference. Sitting down, Cornish contrasted the hug-filled 20 minutes which had preceded his march off the court in Leede Arena.
“No emotional questions please!” Cornish said.
The whole lounge burst into laughter. The gravity of Cornish’s last game in Leede Arena, one that clinched the program’s first trip to the Ivy Madness tournament and its first winning record since the 1998-99 season, was weighing on him. Unfortunately for Cornish, the press was not going to let him off the hook on such an emotional night.
After the final buzzer, I caught Cornish hugging it out with assistant coach Taurus Samuels ’22. In the locker room, Cornish was visibly moved, standing teary-eyed with his hands gripping the collar of his jersey.
“You guys are coming after me,” Cornish said after I asked him about that intimate moment.
There were hugs all around at the packed-out Leede Arena on Saturday, as the ecstatic crowd celebrated Dartmouth’s historic 78-58 Senior Day win over the Bears.
“It means a lot,” Romeo Myrthil ’25 said of his last home court game. “We’ve been through ups and downs, and for especially me and Ryan to get to end it on a high note, … it means so much to us.”
Dartmouth began its night freezing cold, starting 0-10 from the field while allowing Brown to run out to a nine-point lead.
“It was an okay start,” Dartmouth head coach David McLaughlin said. “They made some shots. We missed some shots, and the effort was there. As long as the effort and execution is there, we’ll play through it.”
As the rest of the team slumped, Jayden Williams ’26 got hot, scoring eight points in two-and-a-half minutes. Williams flexed in front of Brown’s defenders after he took a bounce pass from Cade Haskins ’25 to the rack, slamming it down over the arm of Brown sophomore forward N’famara Dabo for a monstrous and-one dunk.
“[Williams] ignited,” Myrthil said. “… [It is] so important for our team, the determination and the grit [he has].”
Even as Williams energized the crowd and helped bring Dartmouth back into the game, it was the seniors who helped the Big Green pull away. After some back and forth between the teams, each fighting for the lead, Cornish and Myrthil hit back-to-back threes midway through the second half to kick the Dartmouth offense into gear. A fragile five-point lead soon turned into 11 in the span of two plays. Dartmouth didn’t look back, pulling out to a stunning 20-point lead with 9:23 left in the game. The Big Green maintained that advantage for the rest of the game.
“I’m just very excited for how our guys played, especially in the second half,” McLaughlin said. “I thought they came out with quite an edge. … That’s kind of been part of our identity.”
Twelve of Cornish’s 18 points — and all of Myrthil’s — came in the second half. Myrthil added 10 rebounds to his 11 points, recording the first double-double of his career. What’s more: Myrthil did so in front of his fan section, which wore celebratory T-Shirts with the words “The Swedish Faithful” in yellow on the front and his jersey number, 20, on the back. The fan section was made up of Myrthil’s friends and family, who had traveled all the way from Myrthil’s hometown of Solna, Sweden, to see him play.
“It means a lot to do that on Senior Night,” Myrthil said. “I gave out 17 tickets — a lot.”
Despite a difficult shooting game, Cade Haskins ’25 made his presence known with five assists, including a beautiful lob from the top of the key to find a leaping Brandon Mitchell-Day ’26 for the alley-oop layup.
The play in some respects symbolized the Class of 2025’s passing of the torch to next season’s seniors — and to the next generation of Big Green basketball. It’s a legacy that resonates with Cornish, who said he had been in contact with Wes Slajchert ’22, the senior captain during his own freshman season, just before the game.
“We’re just doing our jobs by passing it down and doing our best to make sure all the guys are together and bought in,” Cornish said. “Wes Slajchert, we texted this morning. He said, … ‘Keep making the place, keep making the program a better place than when he left it.’ And that’s what really stuck with me.”
While the seniors took the spotlight, Mitchell-Day and Connor Amundsen ’28 also were instrumental to Dartmouth’s win. Amundsen had nine points in the second half to get him into double digits. Even with an injury to his right foot picked up midway through the second half, Mitchell-Day came back into the game with seven minutes to go, fighting his way through the pain to secure the win.
“Brandon’s a co-captain, but I’m proud to say that he’s the main voice of our team, the main leader that we all follow proudly,” Myrthil said. “He puts his body on the floor every day, every practice, every game, and it’s just so easy to follow him.”
Mitchell-Day helped lead a dominant defense — which held the Bears to just 2-21 from the three — while also recording five blocks. Jackson Munro ’26 also demonstrated stifling interior defense, blocking two shots and only fouling once.
Free throws were a key part of the game, too. Cornish, who missed four of his 10 free throws in a tough 72-67 loss to Yale University on Friday night, went a perfect six for six at the line. Cornish contributed to Dartmouth’s impressive night from the charity stripe, with the Big Green hitting 22 of its 26 free throws. Brown was not so lucky, as the home crowd made the Bears’ time at the line a nightmare. Thanks to the noise of the “Dartmouth Faithful,” Brown managed just 2-14 at the line.
“We couldn’t ask for better atmospheres,” McLaughlin said. “The number of people that said to me recently, throughout the year and especially the last couple games, just ‘What an environment it is in there.’”
At the sound of the final buzzer, Connor Christensen ’25 rushed to the stands to celebrate with students, while Cornish hugged Samuels and a hyped Mitchell-Day chest-bumped assistant coach Jabari Trotter ’12. The players then made their way to the locker room, where they gave McLaughlin a well-deserved shower with their gatorade bottles. The celebrations continued as jubilant alumni, parents and Dartmouth fans greeted the team in the foyer with thunderous applause and cheers.
“It just means the world to me to do it for my parents, my family and the guys who have played here before,” Cornish said. “It just means the world that not only do we get to experience the moment, but we get to all experience it together. And it’s not just the guys on the team, it’s not just the locker room we have, but it’s everyone in our Dartmouth community.”
Most important, the win clinches Dartmouth’s first-ever trip to Ivy Madness in Providence, R.I. — a result that would have been nearly unthinkable at the beginning of the season. Now, a team that was ranked last in the Ivy League preseason poll has a chance to finish as high as second in the league standings — if it secures a win over Harvard University and if Cornell University falls to Columbia on March 8.
“It’s just so nice to this year get to prove what we’re made of and that we’re a really good basketball team,” Myrthil said. “And it feels so good.”
Despite their trip to Providence secured, the players are not worrying about the playoffs just yet, McLaughlin said.
“We need to have a great practice on Monday,” McLaughlin said. “We didn’t pitch a perfect game today, right? So we need to learn from our mistakes, both individually and collectively, coaches first and then on to the players. … There’s going to be 15 sets of eyes watching that video.”
Dartmouth will travel to Cambridge, Mass., on March 8 to face Harvard in the Big Green’s final regular season game before heading to Ivy Madness, which will take place from March 14-15. Until then, there is plenty of time for emotion — and emotional questions. If Dartmouth keeps playing the way it has been, the team will have to get used to them.
