Rest In Peace Coach

At one point yesterday afternoon, TigerBlog closed his eyes and imagined what was going on in the afterlife, if such a place exists.

He imagined Pete Carril, new in town. He could see him as he made his way down Main Street, greeting his old friends and family with a "Yo." He was dressed in his gray pants, his blue sweater and his white Princeton golf shirt, the one with an orange basketball that just happened to be under the hole in the sweater, making it look like it was the sweater that had the basketball on it.

"Hey, Pete," a voice called to him. It was John Chaney, the longtime Temple coach, like Carril a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Carril stopped and Chaney put his arm around him, bellowing with his deep laugh "I'm still not going to play you."

Eventually, Carril settled into heaven's version of Conte's, where his old friends Red Trani, Steve DiGregorio and Marvin Bressler were waiting for him with pizza and beer, and for Carril, a cigar. 

"So?" Marvin said. "What did He say?"

It was a moment 33 years in the making, coming as Pete Carril passed from this world to the next.

Carril laughed, with the same anguished face that he had on that day in 1989 when the call went against him, when his Princeton men's basketball team lost 50-49 to No. 1 Georgetown in one of the greatest NCAA tournament games ever — the "billion dollar game," ESPN called it, for the way it made the first round of the tournament such an event — on two swallowed whistles in the final six seconds, and when Carril was asked if he thought they were fouls, he said "I'll take that up with God when I get there." 

"What did He say?" Carril said, biting into a slice, the cigar and the beer at the ready. "He said he's been dreading this moment for a long time."

So, too, has every player who ever played for Carril during his 29 years at Princeton, and every fan who watched his teams play and marveled at them, and every opposing fan who ever chanted "Sit Down Pete" at him as his team surgically carved theirs up, all while he grimaced and thrust his rolled up program straight down in a gesture that said "no way," only it didn't really say "no way."

The moment they all dreaded came yesterday, when Pete Carril, 92 years old, passed away. His was the definition of a life well-lived, well beyond just his basketball genius and success on the court at Princeton that now bears his name, though his impact on the sport of basketball could be measured in the tributes that poured in yesterday, from the biggest names in the sport.

As for TigerBlog, he was one of the ones who chanted "Sit Down Pete" at the coach, back when TB was a Penn student, back when he knew nothing about Carril other than what he saw from the stands in the Palestra. He had no way of knowing what the future held for him, that the man he was chanting at would end up being the most fascinating person he'd ever meet.

He'd get to know him up close, first as a sportswriter and then as his final sports information director at Princeton. He'd see him at practice, on buses, in hotels and on airplanes. He'd walk with him to bookstores and record stores on the afternoons of away games, talking about history, or literature, or sportswriting or who knows what else might be the subject that particular day. 

He'd eat pizza with him at the Earth-bound Conte's. He'd laugh with him. He'd eat the soup that Carril would bring him in his office. He would get yelled at by him and feel the same intimidation that his players must have. He'd watch him drain 35-foot set shots with a cigar in his mouth. 

When Carril famously wrote on the blackboard at Lehigh that he was retiring after the Tigers beat Penn in the 1996 Ivy playoff game, TB was the only one in there at the time. When Carril was inducted into the Hall of Fame, it was TigerBlog who filled out the nomination form — by heart.

"You know more about me than I know about me," Carril once told him.

It probably wasn't true, but TB did know a lot about the man they all called "Coach." He knew about his father, Jose, a Spanish immigrant who worked 40 years in the Bethlehem steel mills and whose work ethic left a lifelong effect on his son. He knew about Joseph Preletz, Pickles, they called him, his high school coach at Liberty High School, where the game plan was always to push the ball and run and gun. 

He knew about the newspaper clipping he carried in his wallet about the night at Lafayette where he had 17 rebounds. He knew that he spent his time in the Army after college writing bios for colonels in a communications office. And he of course knew about the 29 years he spent on the Princeton sideline.

He'd heard the stories he'd tell, about basketball and about life, the ones that ranged from the poignant to the hilarious, from the insightful to the lighthearted, never knowing which kind was coming next.

When he was asked about one of his players who had made the all-tournament team at an in-season holiday tournament, without flinching he said this: "So did the guy he was guarding."

At another such event, he was talking to the media for the home team, the one that his team was going to have to play in the final the next night. "They'll be tough," he said. "They have a lot of big guys." "So does your team," the reporter said. "Yeah," Carril said. "But I didn't go down to the docks to get them."

After Carril won his 500th game at Princeton, he was asked to name some of the biggest wins. He said "you have to start with the Georgetown game." TB, standing behind him, whispered "uh, Coach, you didn't win that one."

There were dozens of those moments. There were hundreds more away from microphones and notebooks. Those moments stand out more, for all of the times that Carril made a point about something, anything, that TB had never before considered.

Maybe the one that resonated the most was the time when he was asked why, when every team in the country besides Princeton was wearing American flags on their uniforms during the Persian Gulf War, he said this: "What good is it if you wear a flag and play like a dog? What good is it if you put a yellow ribbon on your porch or flag on your lawn and cheat on your taxes?"

And in there was the essence of the man. He had no time for gestures. He had no time for shortcuts. He only cared about working hard and seeing results. "You can't separate the player from the person," he'd always say. 

As such, he wasn't always the easiest guy to deal with. TB said before that Carril yelled at him, and it made him freeze in a way that nothing else ever has. It got TB's attention. It made him want to work harder, be better, not allow it to happen again.

But that same quality of his sheer, unqualified, tell-it-like-it-is-pull-no-punches way also made him perfect for Princeton.

There were times when he could have left, taken a job elsewhere, maybe even in the pros. For those 29 years, he never did. TB has called him the "conscience," not just of the basketball team but of the entire University. He had no time for anything other than your performance, and the honesty of the effort you put into it. 

He once said that one day "I'm going to be dead, and two guys will come by my grave and say 'poor guy, never won a national championship,' and I'm not going to hear a word they say."

It was his way of saying that national championships were nice, but some things were more important. For everything he did say, here's something he didn't say: Princeton needed him, needed him as a reminder that life is not always easy and things aren't handed to you.

TB has talked to so many of those who played for him who said that it took them years to understand some of what he taught them. It's one of the great compliments that you can pay to a coach.

This coach? He was "Coach," capital C. The only one like him. The only one who will ever be like him. 

After he learned about Carril's passing yesterday morning, TB spoke with Carril's daughter Lisa. She was distraught, of course. It's never easy, even if you knew it was coming.

They talked for a few minutes. Eventually, Lisa Carril said this to TB: "He loved you."

It was one of the most moving moments of his life. 

To Lisa and Peter Jr. and the entire Carril family, TB sends his deepest condolences. To the players who played for him at Princeton, TB says that he knows how much you feel his loss and appreciate what he taught you.

And to Coach himself, wherever he is, TB says this: Thank you so much for the front row seat into your life, into your mind, into your values, into your world. Thank you so much for everything you taught him.

And he also adds this:

The feeling is very much mutual.