Yo

TigerBlog was walking back to his office the other day when he heard the single most unmistakable sound in the history of Jadwin Gym:

"Yo."

TigerBlog knew immediately where it came from and what it meant. In fact, the only confusing part about it was that there was only one "Yo," as opposed to a string of them.

TB has spent more than a quarter century trying to figure out how many times Pete Carril says "Yo" in his unique way, one that TB has come pretty close to perfecting.

During his time as Princeton men's basketball coach, Carril would stop practice by hollering "Yo," strung together in a staccato manner offered up so quickly that it seemed that one "Yo" blended right into another.

Eventually, TB was pretty sure the answer was four, as in "Yo, Yo, Yo, Yo," though it's possible that it was really five.

The other day, though, it was definitely one.

Maybe he's slowing down a bit now that he's closing in on his 81st birthday. Maybe he's not trying to stop practice.

Whatever the reason, TB can't remember too many times that the "Yo" was in the singular, as it was the other day.

It didn't matter, though, because even a solitary "Yo" meant that Pete Carril was in Jadwin Gym, and when Carril is in Jadwin, he is instantly the center of attention for everyone who sees him.

"Hey, Coach," TB said to him. In a building filled with people who make their livings coaching, Carril is still the only one that TB calls "Coach." In fact, TB can't remember if he's ever called him by his first name.

In this case, "Coach" was standing in the stairwell, talking to the men's basketball coaching staff. Off to the side, standing perfectly straight and silent, was the newest member of that staff and the newest to the coaching profession, Craig Moore, who played at Northwestern under Princeton head coach Mitch Henderson.

TB looked at Carril and then over at Moore, and it seemed like the young officer standing at attention as the five-star general walked by.

It's been 15 years since Carril left Princeton, after a 29-year run that saw him win 13 Ivy titles, make 11 NCAA tournament appearances and win the 1975 NIT. His final record at Princeton was 514-261, and with his 11-12 season at Lehigh in 1966-67 mixed in, his career record as a college coach was 525-273.

Before he became a college coach, Carril - the son of a steelworker from Bethlehem, Pa. - played at Lafayette College, was in the Army and coached and taught at Easton High and then Reading High, where his players (and U.S. Government students) included current Princeton AD Gary Walters.

TB didn't have to look any of that information up, and he could go on for much longer than that on the subject of Pete Carril.

And the biographical information doesn't even begin to take into account all of the funny things that TB has seen or heard from Carril. As TB often says, of the 50 funniest things that he's seen in his life, Carril is probably responsible for 25.

Like the time in New Orleans, when Carril was asked about his next opponent, and he replied that they would be tough to guard because they had such big guys. When the reporter said that Princeton had big guys too, Carril replied "Yeah, but I didn't go down to the docks to get them." Or the time he put a cigar under a stairwell railing in Fresno because he couldn't smoke in the building during a luncheon and then took the cigar back from under the railing two hours later when the luncheon was over.

Honestly, TB could write volumes just on funny Carril stores, many of which are rated R - or worse.

None of that is what went through TB's head when he heard the single "Yo" the other day, though. His first thought really was about how few people here now knew Carril when he coached here, or, for that matter, now him at all.

TB tells Carril stories all the time, always getting big laughs from the people here who hardly know the man.

It's something TB will do for as long as he is here, because it's important for everyone here to know who Carril is and what he did for Princeton basketball and Princeton Athletics.

As Carril walked slowly down the hallway, hobbling somewhat from years of wear-and-tear, TB was thinking about how Carril is in the basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.

Think about it. Is there anyone in the Hall of Fame who did less as a player, no offense to Carril's solid career at Lafayette? Or, for that matter, as a coach, where he his resume includes no NCAA championships, no Final Fours, no international success.

In a building filled with people who were NBA champions, Olympic gold medalists, college All-Americas, Carril's place there is unique.

Put another way, the Hall of Fame features an army of people who are there because of what they were physically. Carril is enshrined because of his mind and the impact that his mind had on his sport.

There is nobody else like Pete Carril, at least nobody that TB has ever met.

It's always good to hear the "Yo."

It Was 20 Years Ago Today ...

The booklet spent about 15 years sitting in a converted refrigerator that now serves as a storage container. For the last five years, it made its way to a file cabinet. Every now and then it saw the light of day and retold its story, its amazing story, its story that continues to make you smile and shake your head and say "what if ..."

The title is "40 Minutes In March," and those 40 minutes were held 20 years ago today, March 17, 1989. It was on that night, at the Providence Civic Center, that 16th-seeded Princeton took on mighty No. 1-seeded Georgetown in what was supposed to be the last appearance ever by an Ivy League school – or school from any similar league – in the NCAA tournament.

Instead, Princeton pushed the Hoyas to limit, falling 50-49 only when Alonzo Mourning blocked shots by Bob Scrabis and Kit Mueller in the final six seconds. Were either one or both fouled?

"I'll take that up with God when I get there," Princeton coach Pete Carril said.

It can't be called the greatest game in Princeton athletic history, because the Tigers lost. Or did they?

Six years later, Carril won his 500th career game. In the postgame interview afterwards, he was asked to talk about his biggest wins.

"Well," he said, "you have to start with the Georgetown game."

"Uh, coach," Mark Eckel of the Trenton Times said. "You lost that game."

The booklet "40 Minutes In March" chronicles the game with the official box and play-by-play, as well as newspaper clippings leading up to the game and afterwards.

"It figures to be a blowout," Stan Hochman wrote near the end of a great column in the Philadelphia Daily News.

"It's difficult to imagine finding a bigger underdog," the Washington Times wrote.

Nowhere did anyone predict a Princeton win, or even a close game. Why would they?

The days of Princeton and Penn dominance of the league seemed over by the end of the 1980s. Princeton barely won the Ivy League title in 1989, needing a win over Harvard on the final night of the regular season to get back to the tournament in the first place.

The Tigers were 11-3 in the league in 1989 and looked ready to join the three previous Ivy champs (Brown in ’86, Penn in ’87 and Cornell in ’88) by getting blown out in the first round. How bad had it been? Well, those three had lost by a combined total of 120 points, an average of 40.0 per game. There was talk of taking away the automatic bid for the Ivy League and for leagues like it, as the tournament clearly had passed them by.

Certainly the 1989 game wouldn't be any better. Georgetown was the No. 1 team in the country, the Beast of the Big East, led by the freshman Mourning and featuring a pressure defense that had rattled the best teams in college basketball.

Then the game started. Mueller started the scoring with a five-foot hook shot, and the next two Princeton baskets came when Scrabis had back-to-back shots goaltended away. It was 8-4 Princeton at the first TV timeout, and the lead would swell to eight on several occasions, the last of which was when it was 29-21 Tigers are halftime. Princeton repeatedly exploited the pressure defense by going backdoor, and Mueller frustrated the bigger Mourning with his ability to play away from the basket, dribble and pass.

The TV audience began to grow and would become the highest rated college basketball telecast ever on ESPN. Before the game, Dick Vitale had said that if Princeton won the game, he would wear a cheerleader's uniform, and now that was becoming a real possibility. John Thompson III, who had graduated from Princeton a year earlier, was shown repeatedly watching his old team and coach play against his father and the team he had grown up with.

Princeton scored first in the second half to go up by 10, but the Hoyas came back. Georgetown took its first lead with a 7-0 run that made it 39-37 with 10:25 to play, but Princeton would regain the lead on a Scrabis layup. Charles Smith put Georgetown back up, but Matt Lapin answered with a three-pointer with 7:30 to go.

The arena couldn't get much louder, as the overwhelming underdog refused to go away. Neither team would lead by more than two for the final 11:44, and Princeton had its last lead at 49-47 on Jerry Doyle's backdoor layup with 1:55 to play. Mourning then made a pair of foul shots to tie it and one out of two with 23 seconds to play to put the Hoyas up 50-49. That set the stage for the final two Princeton attempts, the block of Scrabis with six seconds lefft and then of Mueller with one second to play.

In reality, Princeton sort of let the game get away at the end, with several chances down the stretch that didn't fall. Princeton didn't play a perfect game, but some of the numbers are amazing. Mueller hhad a nine-point, eight-assist night while playing all 40 minutes. Scrabis led the Tigers with 15 points; he too did not come out. Neither did George Leftwich, who played all 40 minutes and turned the ball over just once. Princeton had 14 assists on 21 baskets while turning it over seven times. Lapin scored 12 points and had four assists in 34 minutes off the bench.

For Georgetown, Smith shot 2 for 12 and finished with four points. The Hoyas had seven assists and 13 turnovers, but they did outrebound the Tigers 35-16. In the end, there was too much Mourning, who had 21 points and 13 rebounds.

The game itself was a beauty, but it's the game's legacy that was probably more important. For starters, it directly led to CBS's decision to purchase the entire men's basketball tournament after ESPN had the opening rounds for years, and that was really the birth of what is now March Madness. It saved the automatic bids for the lower conferences, as the thrill of watching to see if the 15th seeds (they have) and 16th seeds (not yet) can win a first round game against a giant.

More provincially, it was a springboard for the three consecutive Ivy titles that followed as Princeton became a Top 20 team within two more years. It also began the focus on the uniqueness of the Princeton Offense, a term that Carril came to hate, in all honesty.

The start of the 1989-90 season was a marvel, as everywhere Princeton went, fans flocked to see the team that had almost knocked off Georgetown and how they did it. Within 10 years of that game, Princeton had become a national power again; within 15 years the offense had spread to the point where almost every team from the NBA down through college and high school had adopted some of its principles.

It can be argued that Princeton athletics had bigger games than that one against Georgetown. Certainly the win over UCLA in 1996 is remembered with greater fondness. TigerBlog doesn't even remember any mention of Princeton-Georgetown as part of the Carril Court ceremonies that recently concluded.

In its historical context, though, that game is probably the single most important game ever for Princeton athletics.

Years later, TigerBlog interviewed Scrabis on the radio at halftime of a game at Jadwin and offered up the obligatory "were you fouled?" question.

"I don't know about that," Scrabis said. "But I do know that if he hadn't blocked it, it was going in."

The Ball's In His Court

The athletic facilities at Princeton University feature names that basically fall into three categories.

There are the ones named for benefactors who donated money for the facility as an acknowledgment of the role that their own athletic experience played in their development (Roberts Stadium, Powers Field, DeNunzio Pool, Weaver Track, Shea Rowing Center).

Then there are the ones that are named for Princeton athletes who died tragically young (Jadwin Gym, Myslik Field, Baker Rink). There are also some named after classes (Class of 1952 Stadium, Class of 1895 Field). The lone outsider is Clarke Field, home of Princeton baseball, which is named for the longtime coach.

This Saturday, a renaming ceremony will occur that completely falls outside the pattern, as the game court at Jadwin Gym officially becomes "Carril Court." The change is, of course, to honor Hall-of-Fame basketball coach Pete Carril, who won 514 games and 13 Ivy League championships in 29 years on the Tiger bench.

It is only fitting that if one facility is to be named differently, it is after Pete Carril. In the history of Princeton athletics, there has never been any one else remotely like him.

He was born into what he often has called "poverty," the son of a steelworker in Bethlhem, Pa., who according to the son "never missed a day in 40 years." Taking that work ethic, he came to a University where privilege and wealth are often the rule – "basketball is a poor man's game," he'd say, "and my guys have three cars in the garage." – and he spent 29 years here as sort of the conscience of the institution.

On his court (long before it would bear his name), priviledge was earned one way - through hard work. He could be gruff, salty. TigerBlog has seen him more than once rip his own shirt off his body during a practice, with the two sides dangling like an unzipped sweatshirt.

His premise was that he and his guys (as he'd call them) wouldn't use any perceived limitations as an excuse. Through hard work, they'd be able to compete, to win, to be the best they could be, to give in his words "a good account of ourselves." He'd scoff at those who said his teams were successful because of the system, choosing instead to talk about how his players could dribble, pass, shoot and defend. "It's a simple game," he'd say. "You pass. You cut. You go backdoor once in awhile. You guard your guy." Or, when asked once what the difference in a game was, he calmly said "they have guardable players, and we guarded them."

TigerBlog has written more about Pete Carril than any other subject, been around him in the context of a newspaper reporter, a radio announcer, a sports information contact and, since he left Princeton, in the unofficial role of media liaison for those looking to get in touch with him. TigerBlog has heard him say things to players that were so inspiring and at other times so caustic that either could move the recipient to tears. "God blessed me the day that kid walked into my life," he said of one player. "If I asked everyone in this locker room to write down one word that best describes you," he said to another player, "I'd get back 15 pieces of paper with the word a------ written on them."

Of the 50 funniest comments TigerBlog has ever heard, Pete Carril probably said 25 of them. Some of them are legendary postgame comments. Some are rated R, or way worse.

Others were while traveling. One time on a plane back from an in-season tournament, TigerBlog sat in the middle seat of three. Directly in front were assistant coach Bill Carmody on the aisle, Coach Carril in the middle seat and an elderly gentleman at the window. Carril and Carmody were working on a crossword puzzle, while the elderly man peered over their shoulders. "10 down should be "so-and-so," the old man said. "Hmmph," Carril sneered. "14 across should be "so-and-so," the old man said. Again, Carril snarled. "7 down should be ..." Before the old man could finish, Carril, then somewhere around 65 years old, cut him off and said "Yo, Pops, when I want your help, I'll ask for it."

Pete Carril is the without question the most charismatic person TigerBlog has met. All conversations end when he enters the room. His voice lingers after he's gone. He's a kindler, gentler person these days than he was 25 years ago, 15 years ago even. Still, he sees through the phony, has no time for it. "There's a difference between working hard and pretending to work hard," he said once during a game, and then followed up by pointing to the other team and adding "and that team is pretending to work hard."

He's come a long way from Bethlehem, from his days as a high school coach. He's not a tall man. He never played a minute of professional basketball. He never reached the NCAA tournament's quarterfinals, let alone Final Four, let alone a championship.

The overwhelming majority of his life was spent riding on buses, not flying on charters. He carried his own bag. He didn't wear a fancy suit. He didn't have one eye on his current job and his other on the next career move.

Yet there he is in Springfield, in the Hall of Fame, as much a member of that exclusive club as anyone, as Magic and Bird and Jordan, as Russell and Cousy and Wilt, as Dean Smith and John Wooden.

Tomorrow night, Princeton will step away from the norm to honor Pete Carril by naming a court after him. Many of his former players will be on the court with him at halftime.

Like many of those former players, TigerBlog could live to be 100 and will never forget Pete Carril, his legacy, his words, his work ethic and what TigerBlog learned just by being around him for so long.

More than anything, though, TigerBlog will remember him for daring to expect the best of his guys, daring them to want to achieve, defying them to forget any excuses. "What good is being Spanish," he'd say, "if you can't chase after windmills?"