April 17, 1991: "Next Year" Is Tigers' Familiar Refrain As Men Cagers Bow in N.C.A.A.s Again By Andrew Mytelka '85

In the ten seasons from 1947 to 1956, the Brooklyn Dodgers won six National League pennants and, playing against the New York Yankees in the World Series each time, lost every championship but one. As lifelong fans of the pre-Los Angeles Dodgers will recall, the concept of Next Year assumed major-league significance. Hope sprang eternal. Each summer, it seemed, the lovable "Bums" put a team of quality on the field -- in '53, they won as many as 105 games -- but each fall, the Bronx Bombers would find some way of sending the Brooklyn faithful home thinking about Next Year. A major difference between the long-suffering Dodgers of old and Princeton's men's basketball team today is that, for the last two seasons, the Tigers' opening-round losses in the N.C A A. tournament have had their consolations. Nobody thought they belonged on the same court as top-seeded Georgetown in 1989, but exploiting the Hoyas' ho-hum attitude, the Tigers took them to the brink and lost (on an uncalled foul) by one point. In 1990, no one expected Princeton to present much of a challenge to Arkansas, which went on to play in the Final Four. But topping even their previous year's performance, the Tigers came from thirteen points behind to almost nip the Razorbacks; they lost by four.

Kit Mueller in his last collegiate game

The Tigers seemed to relish their role as giant-killers (okay, giant-scarers), and a kind of reverse sex-appeal set in: fans of "America's Underdog" made the Georgetown and Arkansas games ESPN's most-watched college basketball telecasts precisely because the Tigers featured odds-beating, no-frills, fundamental basketball that wasn't as boring as it looked. And season by season, they were improving their won-loss record -- 19-8 two years ago, 20-7 last year -- even as they replaced players who graduated and whom the interminably dissatisfied Carril deemed hard to replace.

This year, everything seemed to fall into place. Led by the ubiquitous Kit Mueller '91, the Tigers' academic all-American center, Princeton tore through its schedule, winning all fourteen Ivy League games and finishing the regular season with but two losses. Dominance like this translated into rankings in the national polls and the highest seeding ever for an Ivy school in the N.C.A.A. tournament, eighth. For this year's team, many fans felt, a gallant loss to an N.C.A.A. powerhouse would not be enough; to validate the season, the Tigers would have to produce a win in the tournament. There would be no consolations in defeat this time.

And, truth be told, the Tigers seemed confident of victory in the days before their contest with the Villanova Wildcats. Gone, for instance, was their characteristic "preventive pessimism," the mental defense that steels players preparing for games they aren't expected to win. In a pregame practice at Syracuse University's cavernous Carrier Dome (a facility for indoor football and lacrosse that could swallow two Jadwin Gyms), the Tigers seemed surprisingly loose: Carril attempted some old-fashioned two-handed set shots, and several players experimented with a new game that combined elements of basketball and rugby (no dribbling, no protective gear).

But this time around, the Tigers were matched up with a well-prepared team and a coach, Rollie Massimino, intimately familiar with Carril-style basketball. Villanova's middling 16-14 record, which led some Princeton fans to question if the Wildcats even belonged in the tournament, was deceptive, a result of the team's grueling schedule in the Big East Conference, the nation's toughest. In all, Villanova had played eleven of the sixty-four teams in the tournament, compiling a 7-12 record against them; the Tigers were 2-1 against the field. Despite the higher seeding, Princeton was a two-point underdog in the contest.

Verne Lundquist, a broadcaster for CBS, recently likened playing against Princeton to "being bitten to death by ducks": individually, the players don't seem very threatening, and they win by methodically pecking away for field goals. In a sense, Princeton plays each possession of the basketball as though there are just seconds left in the game. The Tigers typically spend most of the allotted forty-five seconds before they shoot, in theory increasing their chances at a good shot and in practice denying the other team any chance at a shot. For this reason, falling behind Princeton by fifteen is like being behind another team by thirty: there just isn't time to catch up.

So what this tournament game would determine was whether Princeton could dictate the pace to the Wildcats, who prefer the uptempo contests typical of Big East play, and whether the Tigers' outside shooters -- guard Sean Jackson '92 and forward Chris Marquardt '92 -- could take the pressure off Mueller under the basket by lighting up the scoreboard with three-point shots. Given Princeton's slow pace and nation-leading defense, most observers expected it would be a low-scoring affair, and more than one predicted the game would be decided on the last possession. It was.

In straightforward terms, Villanova won, 50-48, because Lance Miller shoveled a running one-hander into the basket with just seven-tenths of a second to play. (For those of you out of touch with the inexorable advance of tournament technology, the N.C.A.A. now times the last minute of these games to the tenth of a second. This innovation sometimes stokes the suspense, and also adds to the ads.) With a wild pass downcourt, Princeton's only hope at a shot, the wily Carril tried two trick in-bounds plays to induce the Wildcats to foul and give the Tigers a chance to tie the game with free throws -- also a dim hope, given their weak foul shooting. But the referees seemed unwilling to whistle even one fairly flagrant foul and thereby perhaps decide the outcome themselves.

In summary, however, Villanova won because the well-prepared Wildcats played Princeton's deliberate game almost as well as the Tigers did, matched the Tigers on defense, and made an unbelievable 71 percent of their shots in the second half (Miller was seven for seven and led all scorers with nineteen). Villanova embarrassed Princeton at the free-throw line, hitting fourteen of fifteen in the game. Weak free-throw shooting was one element in what Carril called his "spotty offense" all year, and it showed in this game: Marquardt missed the front end of a one-and-one with 1:53 to play, Mueller was one-for-two at 1:13, and the team as a whole made just eight of twelve.

Credit should also go to Villanova's defense. The Tigers hit 46 percent of their three-point shots -- higher than their average this year -- but they only attempted thirteen of them in the game. Time after time, the picks that Mueller set for Jackson -- almost sure things in the regular season -- failed to throw the Wildcat defender off stride, and the Tigers had to reset their offense. Princeton's best three-point shooter, it turned out, was point guard Mike Brennan, a freshman who despite foul trouble filled in superbly for the injured George Leftwich '92.

One result of this limited shooting on the perimeter was that Villanova could concentrate on Mueller in the paint. Mueller played valiantly in his last game for Princeton. He was on the court all forty minutes and led the Tigers with fourteen points (no teammate scored more than nine), but he missed eight of thirteen shots. He managed to elicit five fouls (and a disqualification) from the taller Marc Dowdell, but, obviously tired, had a layup blocked seconds before Miller shoveled in his game-winner.

Princeton's offense was, well, "spotty," but the defense was as good as ever. It's easy to criticize Sean Jackson, whose unenviable assignment it was to guard Lance Miller, but Villanova scored exactly the same number of points in the second half as it did in the first -- twenty-five. The Wildcats simply made their shots, and the Tigers didn't. Midway through the second half, for example, Princeton was shut out for 5:23, but Villanova tallied only two points in that stretch. And despite the Wildcats' enormous advantage in rebounds (27-10), the Tigers took more shots because they forced so many turnovers. Defense kept them in the game, but their paltry eighteen points after halftime was not enough to win it.

Another factor in Princeton's loss may have been, paradoxically, its incredible success during the regular season. Winning games by an average of fifteen points, the Tigers -- both players and coaches -- had little experience this season in nail-biting finishes. Their closest Ivy League game was a five-point victory over Yale, and the tightest of all was a 42-39 win over Coastal Carolina (another tournament-bound team) way back in November; just three other games were decided by fewer than ten points. Although their philosophy is well suited for end-game tactics, the Tigers seemed unprepared (or too tired) for heroics.

In the postgame press conference, Carril said that this tournament loss -- "the worst" of the three since 1989 -- seemed "ordained," and indeed the presence of a "basketball chaplain" on the Villanova bench seemed to bear him out. But as Marquardt put it, "We are really sick and tired of giving people fits and then going home. We came here to play hard and win. This really hurts." What consolation might Princeton find in this latest N.C.A.A. disappointment? There's always Next Year.