August 26, 2008
The Nashua Telegraph:
Daniel Webster College hires Faucher as men's basketball coach

This article is reprinted with permission of the Nashua Telegraph. It ran on August 26, 2008. Learn more about the Telegraph by clicking here.
By Tom King, Staff Writer
sports@nashuatelegraph.com

NASHUA – The smile on Phil Rowe’s face said it all. Monday was a big day for the Daniel Webster College athletic program.

“You wanted stability,” the school’s assistant vice president of Student Affairs for athletics said, “well, you’ve got it.”

At least that’s the hope when the school hired perhaps the biggest athletic name its had next to Rowe himself in former Dartmouth College coach Dave Faucher to head its men’s basketball program.

Faucher was associated with the Dartmouth program for 20 years, the first seven as an assistant, a tenure that ended when he stepped down n 2004 with a 13-year 136-208 mark as head coach. For the last three years, Faucher had been the head coach and development director at Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, but said he missed the college game and campus atmosphere.

He and Rowe have had a longstanding relationship and also coached against each other on several occasions, especially when Rowe headed the University of New Hampshire men’s program.

“We always talked about when an opportunity came up, would I be interested,” Faucher said. “So there’s been a cultivation process there…I plan on coaching for a while….The advantages at being at an institution for a long period of time, there’s so many the most people don’t realize.”

With that in mind, Faucher, 59, becomes the fourth Eagles coach in the last four years, and he’s been hired to a full-time position, replacing 27 year-old Jeremy Currier, who resigned after one year as head coach to take an assistants job on the Division II level.

That may be a sharp contrast for the players, but Faucher, whose best year at Dartmouth was 18-8 in 1996-97, says it won’t be a problem.

“My strength in coaching has always been the relationship with my players,” he said.”I’m a relationship builder. I miss the full-time seeing the kids during the day, being with them for all the practices, seeing them in the off-season, following them after graduation…All the things you do in a correct way to run a program, I’ve missed.”