The Music Of Carril

The Princeton Athletics website and social media yesterday unveiled a video tribute to the late Pete Carril, who passed away Monday at the age of 92.

The piece was put together by Cody Chrusciel and narrated by Tom McCarthy, the longtime Princeton play-by-play voice and even longer time Major League Baseball announcer, now with the Philadelphia Phillies. Tom, who also does the NFL and college basketball, was Princeton's voice during Carril's final seasons, including his famous calls on the Tigers' 1996 NCAA win over UCLA.

He and Cody did an amazing job with this.

With the coming of a new academic year, there is much about Princeton Athletics to discuss these days. Today and tomorrow, for instance, are picture days for the fall teams, and pretty soon there will be scrimmages and, a week from tomorrow, the first actual game of the year (women's soccer at home against Colgate).

Still, there will be plenty of time to talk about all of that next week. For today and tomorrow, TB wants to keep the conversation about Coach Carril going.

TigerBlog has already lost track of the number of people who have checked in to talk about Carril, ranging from those who played for him to those who knew him well to those who watched him coach but never met him. He touched them all, that's for sure. 

TB's favorite picture in the video is the one of Carril with Kit Mueller's head on his shoulder, a picture that follows another one of Carril with a younger looking TigerBlog on his right and a really younger looking Mitch Henderson on his left.

The video has shots of Carril from his playing days at Lafayette and from his earliest days as the Princeton head coach. TB was with Carril at the end of his 29 year run with the Tigers. 

When it started, TB was still a little kid. 

Carril was hired on March 8, 1967, two weeks after Butch van Breda Kolff resigned to coach the Los Angeles Lakers. As you know, it was van Breda Kolff who coached Carril when Carril was a senior at Lafayette, and it was van Breda Kolff who recommended Carril as his Princeton replacement after Carril's one year at Lehigh.

A search of the Daily Princetonian archives shows that there have been 2,493 editions in which he was mentioned. That's a lot. 

The first time the name "Carril" in the archives appears, in fact, was all the way back to 1855, even before there was a Prince. This was in the Nassau Literary Magazine, and it said this:

The sound of the college bell will no longer ring in our ears the note of command. If heard at all it will be like the music of Carril, to wake the memory of past pleasures—the sad but pleasant reminiscences of life’s springtime.

TB has no idea what that means.

Carril, in a basketball context, first appeared in 1950, when Carril played against Princeton for Lafayette. Princeton won the game, the season opener, 56-45. Carril scored 12 points for the Leopards, and the Prince story describes him as "Little Pete Carril."

Fast forwarding to 1967, the paper has a story about possible replacements for van Breda Kolff. It mentions then-Director of Athletics Ken Fairman as saying nobody has been offered the job while at the same time Coach Carril's wife Dilly confirmed that he'd been interviewed a few times. 

There was also this:

Speculation began yesterday when the Associated Press compiled a list of seven possible replacements for the Los Angeles Lakers' new mentor. This list included Carril, Army coach Bob Knight, Rutgers' coach Bill Foster, Paul Lynner — van Breda Kolff's successor at Hofstra, Wake Forest's Jack McClusky, Penn's Dick Harter and Jack Ramsey, present general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers. 

That's quite a group, right? Imagine if Bob Knight had been the Princeton coach. He would never have stayed 29 years, but what if had? What would Indiana basketball have looked like.

The job, obviously, went to Carril, whose first win at Princeton was against Knight and Army. This excerpt from the story when he was hired is hilarious:

The new coach had the strong personal recommendation of his former coach, van Breda Kolff. Carril, whose quiet style of coaching is in marked contrast to van Breda Kolff's occasionally volatile histrionics, met with players and coaches yesterday in Princeton.

Quiet style of coaching? Um, er.

Credit has to go to Fairman for picking Carril from that field. Fairman talked about Carril as a teacher and not just a basketball coach. 

And then Carril was off, starting his 29 year run with the Tigers. 

That time was the true Music of Carril.