If you're too young to appreciate it, well, you missed out on a great decade.
Just in case you don't know who those referenced are, TB offers you a quick primer:
* Barney Miller? He was one of the greatest police captains in one of the greatest precincts with one of the greatest rosters of detectives in New York City history (at least the fictional kind)
* Kojak? Who loves ya baby? He was the greatest fictional police officer New York City has ever seen (with all due respect to Barney Miller).
* Jerry Tarkanian? The Shark? He had a bit of a, um, interesting relationship with the NCAA during his years as the men's basketball coach at Long Beach State, UNLV and Fresno State. In fact, Tarkanian sued the NCAA twice, once in a case that reached all the way to the United States Surpreme Court and another that ended with a $2.5 million settlement of a harassment suit (though the NCAA didn't admit the harassment).
Of those three, by the way, only Barney Miller (actually Hal Linden) is still alive.
Tarkanian — the only one of the three who actually was a real person — went 2-1 against Princeton, as near as TB can figure. At least that's how TB remembers it.
Tarkanian's UNLV teams defeated Princeton 68-56 in the second round of the 1984 NCAA tournament 69-35 in the 1990 regular season. That second game came on banner-raising night at the Thomas and Mack Center after the Runnin' Rebels won the 1990 NCAA championship.
The 1984 NCAA game? Princeton had four players who went all 40 minutes, including one who led the team with 24 points on 10 for 13 shooting, with a team-best seven rebounds mixed in. Can you name him and the other three?
The third game was in December 1995, during Tarkanian's first season back at his alma mater (and Pete Carril's last season at Princeton, though nobody knew it at the time). Princeton won that game 59-54, with 34 of those points from the two most recent Tiger head coaches, as Mitch Henderson has 18, and Sydney Johnson had 16.
Oh, and Carril always made TB laugh when he referred to the name of the school where Tarkanian spent most of his career. Everyone calls it "Nevada-Las Vegas." Carril called it "Las Vegas, Nevada." TB isn't sure why he found that funny, but he always did. f t TigerBlog remembered those three games. That is, he searched his own personal database.
This came after he asked three different AI sites this question: "What was Jerry Tarkanian's record against Princeton?" None of the three got the correct answer, including ChatGPT, which offered this:
I could not find any record of a game between one of Tarkanian's teams and Princeton during those years. In fact, modern head-to-head databases list no prior meetings between Princeton and UNLV before their 2024 NIT game, which occurred long after Tarkanian's coaching career ended. So Tarkanian's record against Princeton was: 0–0 (never met).
If you're wondering who had the big game in the NCAA tournament, that would be Howard Levy. TigerBlog will never miss a chance to refer to his good friend Howard.
The other three Princeton players who went all 40 minutes? Billy Ryan, who had a team-best seven assists, Kevin (Moon) Mullin, who had 18 points, and John Smyth.
Ryan, to this day, is still Princeton's career leader in assists with 413, which would be 30 more than second-place Spencer Weisz.
Howard also is a Princeton career record holder still, with a .647 shooting percentage. Only three Princeton players have ever been at least .600 — Richmond Aririguzoh (.636) and Alan Williams (.614). Had Richmond made six shots that he missed, the record would be his.
Anyway, thanks to Super 70s Sports, which is one of the funniest sites you'll visit (again, the disclaimer is you have to have experienced 70s pop culture).
And don't trust everything AI tells you.
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