By Donald W. Arbour '79
ON FEBRUARY 11, the day the blizzard struck, Athletic Director Robert Myslik '61 sat in his Jadwin office and watched the snow fall. Obviously, not too many people would be able to get to the gym that night for the basketball game -- but the Harvard team had already arrived. He decided the only sensible thing to do was let the game go on as scheduled.
For the Princeton players, trailing Penn by two games and fading, the night held hidden promise. When the snow is so deep that you have trouble walking from your dorm to the gym, when only two hundred fans are sprinkled among the eight thousand seats, when the entire Northeast is being humbled by nature, it's almost inevitable that you'll approach a game of basketball from a slightly different perspective than usual. And they did. They seemed to tell themselves: Okay, there's nobody here and we probably can't catch Penn, so let's just play ball and see what happens.
The Tigers won that night, by 67-46, their first easy victory in league play. They won the next night, against Dartmouth. In fact, they would not lose again for five weeks, until the second round of the NCAA tournament. Unexpected help from elsewhere in the league and a victory in their rematch with Penn moved the Tigers into first place. When they beat Columbia on the last night of the regular season, they captured the Ivy title -- and also a spot, sort of, in the tournament.
April 6, 1983
Traveling the Oregon Trail
Robinson: Ivy Player of the Year -- again
Pete Carril shrugged it all off, and his team had an easy time beating North Carolina A&T in Penn's own Palestra. Now the question arose: What about getting assigned to the West Regional? "You can't do anything about that," Carril answered. "It's like getting your orders to go to Korea. Are you gonna write the President and tell him you're not going?" In Corvallis, Oregon, home of the orange and black Oregon State Beavers, Princeton upset the orange and black Oklahoma State Cowboys, ranked 19th in the nation and recent winners of the Big Eight tournament. The Tigers also took the unofficial contest for best-matched nickname and colors. Two days later, still in Corvallis, the Eagles of Boston College (maroon and gold, no threat in the color-nickname competition) eliminated Princeton from the tournament, but not until the lone Ivy representative had outlasted the three entries from the Big Eight and the two from the Pacific Ten, by at least a time zone.
It's hard to remember just how bleak the landscape looked on the bus ride back from Princeton's 57-49 loss at Cornell in early February. Now the Tigers had to rely on somebody else in the league to beat Penn. and they didn't expect that to happen. Carril, always honest, told his players he thought they were out of the race. Four days earlier, they had lost to Penn in Jadwin, 41-39, on a foul with two seconds left -- and now this defeat. Several players commiserated in the back of the bus. "Why is this happening?" they asked one another. "We're not that bad." They looked out their windows and saw a lifeless, wintry countryside. This was as low as you could get. "The guys on the team," says forward Gordon Enderle '83, "are not the kind of guys who will quit." But to entertain hope that the league might yet be theirs required a leap of faith -- and they are not a team of leapers either.
The Harvard game a week later -- Stopping by Hardwood on a Snowy Evening -- marked the beginning of an 11-game winning streak. And then the all-but-impossible happened: Brown beat Penn, 66-62, reducing the Quakers' lead to one game. The next night Princeton showed the Bruins its gratitude by building a 55-21 lead before the substitutes held on for a 75-46 squeaker.
So the Penn rematch, at the Spectrum, offered an opportunity to tie for the league lead. Quaker coach Craig Littlepage started a third-string freshman opposite center Rich Simkus '83, and right away Simkus responded to the dare with a three-point play and a blocked shot. The freshman sat down, but the tone of the first half was set. The Tigers passed crisply through Penn's man-to-man defense, everybody scored, and the lead grew to 25-11 on 68 percent shooting. Even guard Bill Ryan '84, the invaluable ballhandler who seldom looks to the basket, made both of the 18-footers he tried. On defense the Tigers frustrated Penn with their 3-2 zone, in one stretch thwarting six straight possessions -- an interception, a steal, a throwaway, two blocked shots, and one miss -- before Penn finally scored to make it 25-13.
As the second half began, the Quakers hit enough outside shots to get back in the game, and with 11 minutes to go Penn actually took a 36-35 lead. But the Tigers' tough zone, which got a steal and forced a couple of turnovers, enabled them to inch ahead. It was 46-44 with four minutes left when Carril spread the offense. A minute and a half ran off the clock before reserve forward Kevin Mullin '84 spun past his man and drove down the left side of the lane for a layup and a four-point lead. Penn missed a quick shot and had to foul. Mullin made two free throws at 1:23 for a six-point lead, Ryan added four more, and the final margin was 60-49. Forward Craig Robinson '83, who would be named Ivy Player of the Year for the second time, scored 19 points on 7-of-8 shooting, made three steals, and blocked four shots. It was the first time Princeton had defeated Penn in Philadelphia since 1976.
The Tigers had to make free throws down the stretch again in a 79-75 win at Harvard. That same night the impossible happened at Dartmouth: Penn lost to the worst team in the league, 76-66. Princeton now had first place to itself going into the final weekend.
Comell was pesky but fell, 63-53. That left Columbia, a team which had taken the Tigers to overtime in New York. The Lions stayed close well into the second half. With about ten minutes left, Princeton's starting guards, Ryan and John Smyth '86, both added to the excitement by committing their fourth fouls. Carril left Ryan in to run the team, but he replaced Smyth with the inexperienced Isaac Carter '85, who promptly made the decisive plays. He sank two jumpers from the left corner, then got a hand on two Columbia shots that turned into layups at the other end, one by him and one by Enderle. The lead became large enough (70-50 at one point, 72-56 in the end) that Carril was able to remove his seniors -- the starting front line of Simkus, Enderle, and Robinson, plus reserve guard and co-captain Gary Knapp -- from their last home game one at a time for individual ovations.
With the North Carolina A&T game, there began a period of Princeton basketball as a curiosity. Reporters regularly asked opposing coaches, "When was the last time you played against anybody like this?" Princeton is, admittedly, more patient on offense than any school this side of Fresno State. But, Carril insists, his teams play such good defense that opponents end up holding the ball longer than the Tigers. That's what keeps the scores low. And he says he's got the game films to back him up.
North Carolina A&T had certainly never seen anything like Princeton's zone. The Aggies, who like to run but couldn't against the Tigers, didn't bother with a plan of attack: the first person to get the ball within sight of the basket would throw it up while his teammates crashed the boards. Trailing 35-29 with 11 minutes left, A&T went to a pressure man-to-man defense, but Princeton passed it to death -- including a three-man, weak-side backdoor play, Ryan to Simkus in the high post, through to Enderle cutting -- and pulled away to a 53-41 win. A&T used a big edge in rebounding to take twice as many shots as Princeton, but made only 27 percent of them, well below its average of 50 percent. Enderle finished with 18 points, Robinson with 15; Ryan had seven assists. Looking ahead to the games in Oregon, Carril said, "If we rebound, we'll be okay.''
Against Oklahoma State, the ball seemed to be magnetically drawn to Robinson, and Princeton matched the Cowboys on the boards, 31-31. The Tigers took an early lead, but as OSU pulled ahead, 16-12, then 22-14, then 3-22, there were knowing nods from the Oregonians in the stands, as if to say: Yep, it took the Cowboys a few minutes to adjust to this unusual team, naturally, but they should be in control now. Simkus, however, tipped in a missed shot, then a foul gave Princeton the ball again and Smyth hit a jumper from the wing, so it was 30-26 at the half.
The 3-2 zone forced the Cowboys farther out in the second half, and Princeton climbed back on top, 34-32. Neither team led by more than three points the rest of the way. With 8:15 remaining, Ryan fouled out on a call so bad that even the Cowboy involved in the play looked astounded. "We had to play without our head," Carril said about the loss of Ryan, "and that was scary. " OSU got four quick and easy points, but Robinson restored the team's composure with a jumper from the right wing that made it 46-45, Princeton.
In the last few minutes, Simkus, who scored 20 points, took over. From the low post he got the basket that put the Tigers ahead 48-47 at 2:29. Downcourt he gambled and intercepted a pass into the pivot. After Carter made a one-and-one with a minute left for a 50-48 lead, the Cowboys put Simkus on the line twice. He made both one-and-ones to stretch the lead to 54-51. Then he drew a charging foul. With three seconds left, Enderle hit two free throws to finish off the 56-53 win.
''We didn't let this team run on us," Carril said afterward, "but I don't know how. There are so many things I don't understand." Answering the inevitable question, OSU coach Paul Hansen said, ''Their style of play didn't hurt us as much as Robinson hurt us." Robinson did so much damage -- 20 points, 16 rebounds, and three blocks -- that the Cowboys tried to stop him with center Leroy Combs, MVP in the Big Eight tournament. That strategy only got Combs into foul trouble.
About Boston College, Carril said, "They have a lot of depth, and we don't. They like to run up and down the court, and we can't." But let the record show that the Tigers played well against BC -- except for their shooting, ordinarily one of their strengths, but perhaps the part of basketball over which players have the least control. If things aren't going well on defense, you can move your feet a little faster. If you're not rebounding well, you can fight more vigorously for position. If you're shooting poorly, however, trying harder won't do much good. "The shots we practice and the shots we try to take," Carril said, ''are the shots we missed tonight." What had been a one-point game at halftime slipped away as the Tigers missed their first 12 shots of the second half. Their defense kept them close, but with a 51-42 victory, BC won the privilege of facing Ralph Sampson and Virginia.
Any disappointment the players felt was momentary. They only had to think back to the bus ride home from Cornell to realize all they had done to end their season with a flight home from Oregon.