Carril-less Tigers

TigerBlog needs to start with a few corrections from Friday's entry.

First, Rafael Nadal had to withdraw from his Wimbledon semifinal match due to injury, something he had already done before TB published Friday's entry. When TB saw the news Friday morning, he was bummed because he wanted to see how Nadal would have done and because he wasn't sure if he had obligation to update what he'd written.

TB was asked if he thought Nadal was the best tennis player he's ever seen. That's a pretty interesting question, actually, since he considers Nadal one of the very greatest athletes of all time. Where does he rank as a tennis player? 

Well, he does still have the most wins at the majors even after Novak Djokovic won Wimbledon yesterday, so that's a good indicator. TB isn't sure, though Nadal has proven himself to be more than just a great clay court player.

So that's one correction from Friday.

Then there is the tweet TB put out Friday with the link to the blog where he wrote "wishing a happy 92nd birthday to the great Pete Carril." As he posted it, he realized it was Friday and that Carril's birthday was still two days away, but he figured that it was a general birthday wish and that he the entry itself referenced the correct day.

Who would notice, he thought? Carril's son Pete, that's who. He commented that by basically saying he'd forgotten to call his dad that day, which actually was pretty funny. 

So that's another correction.

The last one has to do with the list of coaches who played for or coached with Pete Carril. Somehow he left out people like Armond Hill, Craig Robinson and even his great friend Howard Levy. How did he do that? He did go back and add them. 

Is he forgetting anyone else? That's what TB hates about listing people like that. He always forgets someone.

Also, without getting into details, TigerBlog will always remember the kindness that Armond Hill showed him after an unfortunate incident when Hill was an assistant coach in the 1990s. TB remains grateful to Hill for that moment, and for being an extraordinarily good person in general. He's very glad he had the chance to get to know him.

Speaking of Carril and coaching, and speaking of Armond Hill, TB's list does not include Pete Molloy, who was part of what maybe TB's favorite Carril story as the Tiger head coach. Or at least his favorite that he can repeat here.

Back on Feb. 25, 1975, late in the regular season, Princeton had a game at Virginia. TB has no idea why the game was played when it was, following a weekend trip to Columbia and Cornell and then a home weekend with Brown and Yale to follow. 

Regardless, there Princeton was, on a Tuesday night in Charlottesville. Because his assistants were out recruiting and scouting, Carril was the only coach on the bench that night. Then, with 15 minutes to go, Carril was ejected after a non-call on a play where Hill was taken down and then a call a few seconds later when Hill was whistled for something that Carril considered to be "a travesty of justice," as he called it.

This left Princeton with two problems. First, Hill now had four fouls. Second, the Tigers, you know, had no coach.

Princeton was ahead 35-29 at the time. Carril chose Molloy to be a player-coach. The first thing Molloy did was ignore Carril's instructions and switch into a zone defense to protect Hill. From there, Princeton went on to win 55-50.

The Daily Princetonian story the next day had the headline "Carril-less Tigers Surprise Virginia." The 1975 Tigers lost the Ivy League by a game to Penn, with whom they'd split, only to be done in by a 62-61 loss to Brown on Feb. 1.

It might be just as well that Princeton didn't win the league that year. Those Tigers wouldn't lose again after the Brown game, winning out in the league, beating Virginia in the non-league game and then sweeping Holy Cross, South Carolina, Oregon and Providence to win the NIT, which was a much more prestigious event back then. 

That win counts as one of Carril's 514 at Princeton. Molloy gets no credit for a win, but he does have the honor of knowing that there can't be many other similar examples of a college player-coach.

As Carril tells the story, the team was in the locker room afterwards celebrating when Carril asked, rhetorically, how his guys had won that game. As he has always told it:

"So I'm asking them how did we win this game. How in the hell did we win this game? And then someone yells out: 'we finally got ourselves a coach.'"

That's a great story. 

Happy birthday, Coach. 

Oh wait, that was yesterday.