Tigers Continue To Ride Blast From Past

Go to a Princeton basketball game and you feel as if you’ve stepped into a time capsule. To some, it may be scary, like watching an old black-and-white horror film, with a stalking werewolf. To others, it might be a delight, like Alice tumbling into Wonderland and coming upon a trove of lost treasures - like the back-door play executed time and again with such precision it would make a safecracker envious; like defense as sticky as peanut butter; like maintaining roles as unselfishly as beavers building a dam.

“They can beat you more mentally than physically,” said Wake Forest coach David Odom, before his team played Princeton on Friday in the Jimmy V Classic at the Meadowlands. “They tempt you into doing things you don’t normally do, and then they do things you don’t normally see, and you can end up frustrated.”

Princeton, which is usually shorter, slower and less athletic than its counterparts (Ivy League schools don’t offer athletic scholarships as do their out-of-conference competitors), had just one loss in eight games, and that was to top-ranked North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In that game, the Tigers lost 50-42, even though it was a 2-point game with 32 seconds left.

“We hit only 4 of 26 shots from outside,” Bill Carmody, the Princeton coach, said about that loss. “We felt we should have won.” For their effort, the Tigers made it to No. 19 in the national polls. Shortly before the Wake Forest game, Carmody said: “We lost to North Carolina, but we moved up three slots. I told my players, ‘Don’t think if we lose it’s going to happen again, fellas.’ “

The Tigers didn’t lose, stopping the Demon Deacons 69-64.

Wake Forest is a capable team - it was 6-2 going into the game - though not as capable as it was last season with Tim Duncan, who became the No. 1 pick in the National Basketball Association draft. But it’s an Atlantic Coast Conference team, and, as Steve Goodrich, the 6-foot-10-inch senior center of Princeton said, “the ACC is probably the strongest basketball conference in the country.”

Wake’s game plan was to shut down Princeton’s 3-point shot. And so the Tigers opened their scoring with a 3-point shot by guard Bruce Earl. And then, within six seconds of the second minute of play, Princeton made three layups, two on back-door plays - a bounce pass and a hook pass to cutters as the Wake defenders trailed by an improbable step. I say “improbable” because the Tigers made it look so easy. A minute later there was another layup, and then another, and another. With 5:30 gone in the game, the Tigers led 13-4.

For Princeton, there was not a single dunk shot, not a single fast break, not a single bad shot taken. You could go to 127 NBA games and never see basketball played as wondrously. It wasn’t the improvisation of jazz, which can make the best of modern-day hoops a pleasure, but the carefully rehearsed syncopation and counterpoint of a symphony orchestra. It wasn’t the jitterbug, but the ballet. It wasn’t Picasso, but Rembrandt.

This is what you heard from the stands, about the back-door: “Isn’t that nice.” “Oh, my god!” About Wake: “You’d think they’d learn.” About a Princeton 3-pointer: “They got you comin’ and goin’.”

The first half ended with 10 layups for Princeton and one for Wake. And yet Wake, which began to gather itself, trailed by only 6 points, 32-26. “Every team can hang with us,” said Carmody. “So we must be precise.”

This is the choreographed Princeton system that was devised by the cigar-wreathed Pete Carril and, as that shrinking-violet but astute broadcaster, Dick Vitale, said, “has been brought to a new level by Carmody.” Recall that Princeton upset the defending champion, UCLA, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament two years ago. And it regularly scared other powerhouses, losing to Georgetown by 1 point, Villanova by 2 and Arkansas by 4 in other first-round games.

But this Princeton team is considered the strongest in years. “They’re more athletic than a lot of people give them credit for,” said Howard Garfinkel, the renowned basketball director of the Five-Star Camp. “They’re also a veteran team.”

In the second half Wake, which, according to Odom, had been “embarrassed” by the back-door plays, cut most of them off. So the Tigers went to the outside. They had hit only 2 of 11 3-pointers in the first half, but now they nailed 7 of 9 in the second half.

Yet with 50 seconds left in the game, Princeton was ahead 63-61. And then Mason Rocca, substituting for Goodrich, who had fouled out, led Henderson with a bounce pass, the way George Mikan once did for Slater Martin, and this back-door play - only Princeton’s second of the half - elegantly and fittingly sealed what would end as a victory for the Tigers.

While Princeton basketball today may not be the wave of the future, it is surely a wave of the past. It is part remake and part rerun and all pleasure.