Goodrich's Journey

The first sentence of the current "Journey To Jadwin" profile of Steve Goodrich are these:

"112 games, 112 games started."

To that, TigerBlog could add "110 games that he saw in person."

TigerBlog was there for every game Goodrich played in his four seasons at Princeton except for two - the game in December of 1994 at UMass and December of 1995 against Fresno State. TB missed those games after the deaths of his mother and grandmother.

Other than that, TB saw every one of them.

If you were going to pick a college basketball team to be the athletic communications contact for, you couldn't really do much better than Princeton during the Goodrich era.

Led by its big man, Princeton would win the Ivy League titles in his last three seasons and twice win games in the NCAA tournament. Some of the greatest moments in Princeton history were in those three seasons, including the win over Penn in the 1996 Ivy playoff, the win over UCLA in the first round of the 1996 NCAA tournament, a 28-0 run through the Ivy League in 1997 and 1998 combined and a national top 10 ranking in 1998.

When TB thinks back to all of the great moments he's experienced at Princeton, being a part of those basketball teams is way, way, way up there.

Goodrich was a three-time first-team All-Ivy League selection and the 1998 Ivy League Player of the Year. He was also an All-American his senior year.

He remains the most recent Princeton men's basketball player to do two things: 1) play in the NBA and 2) be a first- or second-team Academic All-American. That's a good combination.

Goodrich played in 21 career NBA games with the Bulls and Nets. He also had a long career playing in Europe professionally. His NBA career points total in 24, which might not seen like a lot but hey, he can always say he scored points in the NBA. That's something only the elite of the elite of the elite get to say.

When he started to read the Journey To Jadwin piece, TB immediately thought he'd tell his colleague Elliott Carr, who wrote it, about the quote Pete Carril had about Goodrich. Then he saw it in the story, so he didn't have to.

From the story:

Plans were for Goodrich to play as a power forward at Princeton, but six weeks into his freshman year he was switched to center. When asked about it, Carril provided a quote for the ages that Sports Illustrated used as its Quote of the Week. “Somebody said ‘you’re switching Goodrich to center, is it because he doesn’t have the shooting range?’ He goes ‘well yeah, he has the shooting range. What he doesn’t have is the making range.’ I was the ignominious quote of the week six weeks into my freshman season.”

TigerBlog can vouch for that. He was there when Carril said it.

He was also there when Carril was asked by a reporter about Goodrich's being named an Academic All-American. Carril basically said this: "He has a 3.8 grade point average. He'd be better off with a 3.6 and a little more work on his jump shot."

Goodrich was part of an incredibly close group of players from his time at Princeton, a group that included current Tiger head coach Mitch Henderson, Brian Earl, Gabe Lewullis, James Mastaglio, Sydney Johnson, Chris Doyal and Darren Hite.

His class, the Class of 1998, spanned the final two years of the Carril era and the first two years of the Bill Carmody era. Because of their overwhelming, and high-profile, successes, the team drew a ton of media coverage in those years, especially from major newspapers throughout the country.

TigerBlog spent a lot of time coordinating those interviews, and he always heard the same thing after each of them: "Those guys are great."

And they were. All of them.

Even to the very end, they were the exact kinds of guys you wanted representing you. For Goodrich, that end came after an excruciating second-round NCAA loss to Michigan State in Hartford in 1998.

When it was over, Michigan State was first in the postgame interview room. As the Spartans spoke, TB and Goodrich stood on the other side of a screen, just a few feet away, able to hear everything they were saying (it was all very complimentary).

It was a tough spot for any athlete to find himself - a brilliant career, over just like that, and now he has to face a room filled with reporters asking him, inevitably, how he feels, how does it feel, what did you think of the game, that kind of stuff.

TB was standing next to Goodrich, who was sitting on a screen, facing away from the screen. TB remembers that Goodrich was more angry and frustrated than he was sad. He wanted to say something to him, but he wasn't exactly sure what.

Then, when it was Princeton's turn, Goodrich went to the stage and answered every question. Afterwards he headed back to the locker room, and TB was standing in a hallway when a sportswriter who had written one of those stories a few weeks earlier came up to him and said Goodrich "was great" in how he handled everything.

TB remembers a few things from that day 22 years ago more than the others. He remembers the poor start to the game. He remembers the three-pointer that Mateen Cleaves drained in front of him in the final minute to break the Tigers' backs. He remembers standing next to Goodrich before he went on the stage. And he remembers the "Goodrich was great" comment in the hallway.

Goodrich stood 6-10 but was incredibly soft-spoken. He had a quiet laugh. He oozed confidence. He was extremely polite. He walked slowly away from the court but was ferocious on it.

As TB said before, he was lucky. He got to be the athletic communications contact during those years.