Garden Party

If you know much about Bill Bradley's Princeton basketball career, then you know about the records that he set that have almost no chance of ever being broken.

For instance, Bradley's 2,503 points - in three years, without a three-point shot - don't seem untouchable, until you consider these two facts about current Tiger Devin Cannady:

1) Cannady needs to average 14.4 points per game for the rest of the regular season to finish as the No. 2 scorer in program history, and
2) Cannady would need to average 60.6 points per game for the rest of the regular season to catch Bradley

That's a little perspective.

When you think of the games that Bradley played at Princeton, there are a few that stand out more than others. One of these was his last, when he scored 58 points against Wichita State in the 1965 NCAA tournament consolation game, and those 58 points are still the record for the most ever scored in a Final Four game.

The other game that seems to stand out is the 1964 Holiday Festival game at Madison Square Garden. In that game, Bradley scored 41 points before fouling out with four minutes to go with the Tigers ahead. Michigan would come back to win 80-78 on a shot by Cazzie Russell with four seconds left.

Russell, by the way, would win an NBA championship with Bradley as New York Knicks' teammates in 1969-70.

Fast-forwarding 33 years to another Holiday Festival, Princeton won the 1997 version, defeating Niagara 61-52 in the championship game after a 58-56 win over Drexel in the first game. This tournament is famous for a few reasons, including a timeout that head coach Bill Carmody called in which he said to his team: "you're smart; you'll figure it out."

Also, in that Niagara game, Princeton had 21 baskets and 21 assists, which, by the way, isn't necessarily a good thing the way the game is played these days, especially with a 30-second clock. Princeton can put five players on the court now who all routinely create their own shot, a sign of the evolution of the offense.

In the 1997-98 season, that 21 for 21 was a sign of the unique way that Princeton played, and it got considerable national exposure. Mitch Henderson, the current Tiger head coach, had eight of those 21 assists (and 11 points), and his two-night line in the Holiday Festival was 23 points, 13 assists and five steals, not to mention 80 minutes played.

Princeton played at the Garden often in the 1960s and 1970s, into the 1980s, between Holiday Festivals, NITs (the entire tournament was played there back when Princeton won it in 1975) and a few single games. If TB is correct, then Princeton's only other MSG experience between that 1997 tournament and this past weekend, when Princeton played St. John's in a one-game Holiday Festival, was the 2000 Holiday Festival, with losses to Penn State and Rutgers that came a few months before the Tigers won the 2001 Ivy League championship under first-year head coach John Thompson III.

Madison Square Garden bills itself as "The World's Most Famous Arena," and there's something extraordinarily special about playing there. Princeton dropped the game to the unbeaten Red Storm 89-74 (after trailing by only six at the under-four media timeout of the second half), but there was much more to the game than that.

TigerBlog watched it on TV, and as he did he thought that the players would never forget playing there. When Ryan Schwieger hit a long jumper from the corner, for instance, TB thought the sophomore would always be able to talk about the time he knocked down a three at the Garden.

Apparently, TB wasn't the only one who felt this way.

"Hard Cuts," the weekly video series that chronicles the men's basketball program, is in Season 2, and the current episode that was released yesterday follows the team during its trip to New York City, starting at Ground Zero and continuing with the game.

You can see the episode HERE.

This episode is a little longer than the others, running 7:29, but it's well worth the extra few minutes.

In the end, Henderson talks about what it all meant, and his comments are great - very strong and very thoughtful. When you hear them, you'll know what TB means. For everything else that's in the video, the head coach's comments at the end are the best part.

Mitch talks about his own memories of competing at Princeton and what he took away from that time, and he also mentioned that he thinks that his team will be talking about what they saw this weekend for awhile.

Or, as TB thinks, forever.