Heading To Richmond

As his colleague Elliott Carr was walking out of the Office of Athletic Communications on his way to the men's basketball bus, TigerBlog mentioned to him about how Princeton played only five guys in the opening round win over Georgetown in the 1999 NIT.

Those five: Ahmed El-Nokali, Brian Earl, Gabe Lewullis, Chris Young, Mason Rocca.

TB suggested that it was possible that no team has played five players 40 minutes each in a college basketball since. Elliott suggested he check out IUPUI.

And so he did. As it turns out, the Jaguars had five players - B.J. Maxwell, Boston Stanton III, Nathan McClure, Chuks Isitua, Mike DePersia - go all 40 minutes each in the Horizon League tournament loss to Oakland two weeks ago. It seems IUPUI was ravaged by injuries and at one point had to advertise for practice players on campus.

The 1999 NIT remains one of TB's favorite postseason experiences with the Princeton men's basketball team. It was just a lot of fun.

If you've forgotten, Princeton defeated Georgetown and then North Carolina State before falling to Xavier in the quarterfinals. The game against Georgetown was played in Jadwin and was followed by trips to Raleigh and a quick turnaround to Cincinnati.

They were three really well-played, really entertaining games. TB hasn't asked any of the Tigers who played back then, but he's guessing they remember it pretty much the same was he does. 

If anything, he's still not quite over losing the double figure lead, and then the game, to Xavier. Had the Tigers won that game, they would have been guaranteed two more in Madison Square Garden.

TB didn't realize this until he looked up just now, but Earl and Lewullis played all 120 minutes of the three games.

The current Princeton men's basketball team is making its NIT debut tonight at 7 on ESPNU at Virginia Commonwealth. As with every other team in the NIT, the goal was to make the NCAA tournament, but this event can be a great consolation prize.

Princeton will be playing in the NIT for the seventh time. No discussion of the NIT and Princeton is complete without mentioning another great postseason run, though on that was a bit before TB's time, the one in 1975, when the Tigers ran through Holy Cross, South Carolina, Oregon and Providence to win it all. Back then, the tournament was played completely in the Garden, with four games played in a one-week stretch.

This was part of the Daily Princetonian story: 

"Don't wake me. Let me dream," said the ebullient coach puffing on his cigar in the winning locker room last Sunday.

Interestingly, that story also included this:

Just minutes after Princeton's miraculous 80-69 victory over Providence in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) championship game, Tiger coach Pete Carril stood before a standing-room-only crowd of reporters and cameramen in the Madison Square Garden press room. A sportswriter for a major wire service asked the mastermind of the Princeton NIT title, "How does the glass slipper feel?" Thinking back to the seemingly insurmountable odds which his team overcame, a candid Carril replied, "I hope it never gets to be 12 o'clock."

When did the Cinderella metaphor first get used in sports? TB found this on Wikipedia (so it just be true):

In a sporting context the term has been used at least since 1939, but came into widespread usage in 1950, when the Disney movie came out that year, and in reference to City College of  New York, the unexpected winners of the NCAA Men's Basketball championship also that year. The term was used by Bill Murray in the 1980 movie "Caddyshack,"  where he pretends to be the announcer to his own golf fantasy: "Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion."

VCU, by the way, is 21-9 on the year and was the third-seed in the recent Atlantic 10 Conference tournament. The Rams allow only 61.3 points per game, which ranks 16th in Division I. They also are the No. 3 team in the country in three-point percentage defense, so somewhere in there figures to be where this game is decided.

The winner gets the winner of Towson-Wake Forest.

Princeton isn't playing in the tournament it wants, but the Tigers showed great grit and toughness to force the Ivy tournament final into a one-possession game, something that never would have happened without the clutch play of Jaelin Llewellyn and Tosan Euvbuomwan. It's a quick turnaround to the NIT, but it's a great opportunity for the team to get back out there together. 

One more thing about the Ivy men's basketball tournament: The biggest winner was Noah Savage, the Princeton alum who was the color commentator. He was great on all three games.

So now it's NIT time for the Tigers. Hopefully they have fun, and hopefully it lasts awhile.