Sports: March 10, 1999
Miracle at the Palestra
Princeton comes back to beat Penn in the game of the year
February 9 at the Palestra. An hour before game time, Brian Earl '99
slouches in a courtside seat and watches the Penn team warm up. Off the
court, Earl has a distinctive languor -- he's always leaning against something,
or slumping in his chair as if he's saving all his energy for those moments
when he has a basketball in his hand. But while his body may be at rest,
his eyes, burning with the same intense stare that is his trademark on the
court, are locked on the Penn players. And Penn looks good -- their starters
are hitting shots from all over the court. After watching them for five
minutes, Earl stands and goes back out to practice. He misses the first
shot and curses to himself: he knows that he needs to shoot better this
night.
Princeton and Penn have just finished Pretender's weekend, showing Dartmouth
that just because you've gone 6-0 against the rabble of the Ivy League does
not necessarily mean you can win at Jadwin or the Palestra. Dartmouth did
hang with Penn before falling 69-57, but Princeton played perhaps its best
game of the year in crushing the Green 76-48. Princeton and Penn, therefore,
enter the game with matching 6-0 records in the league and the usual prize
at stake -- win the Ivies and go to the tournament, lose and hope for an
NIT bid. And even though Sports Illustrated has sent a writer to
the game to write about the injustice of that rule, nothing's likely to
change this year. That's one of the reasons why Penn-Princeton could be
the most intense basketball rivalry in the country -- after all, if North
Carolina gets swept by Duke, it's still probably going to make the NCAAs.
Despite the Tigers' convincing victory over Dartmouth, coach Bill Carmody
is worried before the game. He does have some legitimate concerns. Point
guard C.J. Chapman '01 is in a shooting slump, and it's affecting the rest
of his game. "He's not even fouling guys," Carmody says. Senior
Gabe Lewullis's knees are not good, to say the least, and Chris Krug '02
and Mason Rocca '00 are locked in an uneasy rotation at the other forward
spot. "Sometimes I wonder up until the jump ball what kind of game
we're going to have," Earl says.
Player introductions. The crowd, which seems even more rabid than usual,
saves its loudest jeers for Earl. The team comes back to the huddle as the
entire Penn student section chants, "F -- you, Princeton." This
is apparently the peak of cleverness in Philadelphia. (After the game Gary
Walters '67, director of athletics, will call Penn to complain about both
the cheers and a few signs that question the sexual orientation of several
Princeton players.) As Carmody talks to the tight huddle of Princeton players,
Earl is chewing gum. "I wasn't really worried," Earl says. "But
I was wondering how the young guys would respond."
Princeton gets off to a good start as Earl makes an early three, but
things quickly fall apart. Princeton turns the ball over and misses several
open shots while Penn hits a free throw, a three, and two layups to go up
8-3. The Quaker crowd, loud during player introductions, is now deafening.
A shot by Penn's Michael Jordan hits the back of the iron, and kicks off
the front of the rim straight up in the air. Jordan is already running back
up court when the ball finally falls through the net: 11-3. Earl brings
the ball up, and Jordan jumps in his way at half court. Earl dribbles behind
his back and cuts to his left, but Jordan slides over in his way. Inexplicably,
the referee calls a charge. Earl smiles wryly. "At that point,"
he says, "I was just thinking: what else can happen here?"
He quickly finds out. Penn gets three quick baskets, and since Mason
Rocca '00 hasn't provided his usual lift, Carmody replaces the struggling
Chapman with seldom-used Phil Belin '00. With Belin in the game, Earl is
the only true guard on the court for Princeton. It's not a new role for
him. This season, Earl has become the de facto point guard, running the
offense and driving to the basket far more frequently than in previous years.
"My role in the offense used to be that I either took a three- pointer
or cut for a backdoor layup," he says, "but a lot has changed.
Now I enjoy taking the pull-up jumper even more than shooting threes."
Carmody admits that in the absence of Mitch Henderson '98, Earl is "kind
of our point guard now. He's always been a good dribbler, always seen the
court well and passed well, but in the past we had other people to do some
of those things." In the Dartmouth game, Earl had played his new role
beautifully, handing out nine assists without turning the ball over.
But against Penn, Earl and the offense are struggling. The team, which
finishes the half having shot just 2-18 from the field, repeatedly misses
open shots and turns the ball over. Even worse, the Quakers are hitting
everything, and the margin steadily grows. At 26-3, Penn's Paul Romanczuk
makes a driving layup and is fouled. After he hits the free throw, the run
is now 29 points. So this is what it feels like to root for Brown. I write
my lead, "Princeton was due for one of these games. You just hoped
it wouldn't be against Penn." As the Tigers come back down the court,
the Penn student section rhythmically taunts, "You have three points."
The faces up in Princeton's small student section just under the rafters
are stricken -- losing to Penn is bad enough; being humiliated is like reading
about the Nude Olympics in The New York Times.
Fourteen minutes of game time have passed since Earl's three when Chris
Young '02 is fouled under the basket. He makes the first free throw, and
the Penn crowd cheers sarcastically. For the last five minutes of the half,
the teams trade baskets, and the Tigers head into the locker room down 33-9.
Carmody doesn't say much at halftime. He doesn't have to. "There was
no pep talk," Earl says. "It was obvious. We were getting killed
-- the offense was horrible, the defense was horrible. I was upset with
myself and the team."
The second half opens the way the first half ended, as the two teams
trade baskets for five minutes. With 15:11 left, Jordan hits a three to
put the Quakers up by 27 points. The reporter next to me says, "That's
the nail in the coffin." Rocca, however, answers with a three of his
own. Up in the student section, George from Hoagie Haven turns to Lewullis's
sister and predicts that Princeton is going to come back. He might be the
only believer in the Palestra -- after all, Princeton's backcourt is a mess,
Lewullis is playing on heart alone, and Young is shooting 1-9 and about
to pick up his fourth personal foul.
But Earl steals the ball and hits a three, the beginning of a 23-2 Princeton
run over the next nine minutes. Lewullis repeatedly jumps into Penn's passing
lanes, getting three steals and tipping the ball several other times. After
one steal he outruns the whole Penn team on those aching knees to the basket.
Carmody, who was confident that his team would make a run at some point,
knew that his two seniors would have to provide the spark. "I don't
think [Earl and Lewullis] believed they were going to win," he says,
"but they wanted to show that they could play. And I know the younger
guys fed off of that."
The run moves in slow motion, and the Penn crowd starts nervously watching
the clock as the lead shrinks. Princeton pulls within nine on a huge offensive
rebound and putback by Rocca (shown at left), who is playing the second
half like he's auditioning for the William Wallace role in Braveheart.
"It was like an imperceptible riptide," Walters says. "You
couldn't see it on the surface, but it was dragging them out and dragging
us in." So when Earl nails a long three to pull Princeton within 6
with 6:42 remaining, the run toward respectability has become something
entirely dif-ferent. "You could see it on their faces," Earl says.
"They knew it wasn't over. And you could see on our faces that we wanted
the ball."
On the Quakers' next possession, Jordan, perhaps sensing the danger,
drives to the basket. He's bumped, but looking like his namesake, he hangs
in the air long enough to make the shot. The crowd explodes with understandable
relief. Penn's lead is back to nine and Princeton must have exhausted itself
on that improbable run. The Tigers have been pressing, and while Penn coach
Fran Dunphy has been rotating his players heavily, Earl and Lewullis have
played their usual marathon minutes. Can they have any gas left? The answer
comes quickly. Earl drives into the lane, dribbles behind his back, and
takes a 12-foot hanging jump shot that hits the front of the rim. The ball
kicks back toward the foul line, and Earl, following his shot, slides his
lithe body between two hulking Penn forwards and grabs the rebound. He kicks
the ball back out to the point and then slips back behind the arc. A moment
later the ball is back in his hands, and he catches and shoots in one smooth
motion, his body leaning backward and his heels clicking together at the
top of his jump: 45-39.
Twice, Penn scores, and twice, Princeton answers. Young nails an eight-footer
and then steals the ball on the next play. "I could see in Young's
eyes that he was feeling different," Carmody says. Princeton patiently
moves the ball around the arc, and with the defense closing on Earl, Young
takes a three. Good: Penn leads 49-46. On Penn's next possession, Matt Langel
gets into the lane, but travels. Princeton ball, TV timeout. En masse, the
Penn student section sits down, and suddenly the only noise in the Palestra
is coming from the Tiger corner. In the huddle, Carmody tells his charges,
"Hey guys, let's not do anything weird, okay?" He's too late --
they're already doing something weird. Princeton, which hasn't hit a single
backdoor all day, has exploded for 37 points in 15 minutes. As his team
takes the court after the timeout, Carmody turns toward the crowd and says
into space, "You know, we might actually pull this sonofagun off."
Princeton inbounds, and with time running down on the shot clock, Earl
fakes a three, gets his defender in the air, and then drives toward the
basket. He loses another two defenders with a hesitation dribble, and nails
the layup. Penn turns the ball over. Young, who has been having trouble
getting to the basket around Geoff Owens, launches a sweeping Kevin McHale
hook -- the bow-and-arrow in this era of nuclear dunks. But arrows can still
kill: 50-49. Princeton leads with two minutes left. Princeton leads!
Both teams then look tight at the foul line. Penn goes 0-3, and Rocca
misses the front end of a one-and-one. Penn gets the ball back with 17 seconds
left, still down 49-50, and Dunphy puts the ball in Jordan's hands. Ahmed
El-Nokali '02, who's played a gem on defense in the second half, stays in
front of Jordan until, with seven seconds on the clock, Jordan drives to
the free-throw line. Earl, who is guarding his old friend Matt Langel, jumps
over on Jordan, and the Penn guard makes an awkward pass to the now-open
Langel. With five seconds left, Langel drives right, rises, and takes a
15-foot jump shot for the game -- the best look any Penn player has gotten
at the basket in the half. Just short. The ball kicks along the baseline,
Lewullis tips it, and the smallest player left on the floor, Earl, goes
up and gets the rebound. As the horn sounds, Earl runs to the center of
the Palestra, his hands reaching up to the impossible scoreboard. And I'm
standing on the press table, waving an orange shirt and looking like an
unprofessional rube while the Tiger reserves storm onto the court. From
my perch I see El-Nokali has his arm around Earl. The Tiger captain's face
is buried in his palms; the ice has finally melted.
Most of the Penn players don't shake hands, they just run for the locker
room, and while the Palestra leaks red-and-blue-clad mourners as quickly
as its ancient doors will allow, orange shirts and hats gather around the
Princeton band in the rafters and dance to "Louie, Louie." "This
is the best game I've ever seen," Chauncy Pilgrim '99 shouts over the
din. "To come back the way they did -- it was even better than UCLA!"
Pat Krug '92, who was in Philadelphia to root for his brother Chris, says,
"I looked down and saw my 82-year-old grandmother dancing on the floor
of the Palestra with the Princeton Tiger mascot. And, I mean, getting down
and funky."
Beneath the stands in the press room, Dunphy, Jordan, and Romanczuk face
a line of hungry reporters. Dunphy, his mustache quivering, says, "I've
seen a couple games like that, but never been involved in one." He
pauses. "It was a pretty remarkable turn of events." Jordan, usually
so affable in press conferences, answers questions in a quiet monotone,
his face a mask. "I wasn't going to let them see me cry," he later
says.
Ten minutes later, Carmody and four of his jubilant players have recharged
the atmosphere in the small room. "I'm just proud of these guys,"
Carmody says. "All those things you preach about not quitting..."
his voice trails off. The game has finished that sentence for him. In a
corner of the room, Earl slumps against a wall, his body lax once again.
"I've played in some huge games," he says, "but that was
like a storybook ending. Those last couple seconds -- I don't think I've
ever felt that emotion. When I grabbed that last rebound I just collapsed.
I'd given everything." A reporter asks another player if the team is
going to celebrate later that night. The player just smiles. (He doesn't
know that when the players get back to campus, the one open eating club,
Tiger Inn, will claim it's "members and passes only" and refuse
to let the team in the door. Apparently the largest comeback in school history
-- fourth in NCAA history -- isn't credentials enough.)
Back in the arena, a few Tiger fans still sit in their seats savoring
the moment. Debris covers the Penn student section: newspapers, signs, and
confetti abandoned by the fleeing crowd. As Carmody chats with friends by
the Princeton bench, a Penn player cuts across the floor from the home locker
room. His eyes still wet, he shakes Carmody's hand. "Coach," he
says, "I want to apologize for walking off the court without shaking
hands." A moment later he's gone.
When Earl finally finishes with the reporters, he walks back out onto
the Palestra floor and the small crowd claps as he hugs his family. He chats
for a few minutes and then walks across the Palestra floor to the locker
room. Just before he rounds the corner, he pauses and glances up at the
now-dark scoreboard as if to confirm what he had done.
-- Wes Tooke '98
Men's update
Princeton quickly lost the advantage it had gained in the Palestra by
losing two tough games. The Tigers' 35-game Ivy win streak ended with a
60-58 loss to Yale in double overtime on February 12. After beating Brown
67-45 and Dartmouth 65-51, the team fell to Harvard in single overtime 87-79.
Penn's only loss in the league remains its game against Princeton, and,
unless Penn is upset next weekend, the Tigers must sweep their three remaining
games against Columbia, Cornell, and Penn to force a one-game playoff against
the Quakers at Lehigh on March 5. "It's going to be tougher from here,"
Gabe Lewullis '99 says, "but we're still in the [race]." This
issue went to press on February 22.
Women's hockey in postseason
At the conclusion of a 4-1 win against St. Lawrence on February 13, the
members of the playoff-bound Princeton women's hockey team shook the hands
of the vanquished Saints, then methodically proceeded to the locker room.
There was no loudspeaker announcement that the Tigers had just qualified
for the postseason, no champagne corks ricocheting off lockers, no Kool
and the Gang songs blaring from the locker-room stereo.
"All I was thinking was what a lousy weekend we'd had," says
assistant captain Danya Marshman '00, who, despite the victories, was unhappy
with the way the team had played. But wins are wins, and the sixth-place
Tigers desperately needed a pair to snap out of a three-game losing skid
and resurrect preseason hopes of finishing in the upper echelon of the ECAC.
Eight teams qualify for the playoffs, and the team knows it could finish
anywhere from second to eighth place in the logjam behind first-place Harvard.
The Tigers had struggled in their first four games following exam break,
defeating only Boston College 6-2 while losing to Dartmouth 7-1, Providence
4-3, and Brown 7-0. "When you play crappy games you lose confidence,"
Marshman says. Marshman, who sports what she calls a Monroe -- a pierced
upper lip in the location of the actress Marilyn's mole -- wants the team
to develop the confidence and consistency of a DiMaggio.
The Tigers began to recapture that quality in a crucial home game against
Cornell, which entered the contest just a hair below Princeton in the standings.
Rookie forwards Jess Fedderly '02 and Melissa Deland '02 staked the Tigers
to a 2-0 lead, and after Cornell scored, forward Ali Coughlin '99 potted
her team-high 16th tally and provided breathing room in an eventual 3-2
victory. Earlier in the week, Coughlin learned that she had been named a
finalist for the Patty Kazmaier ['85] Award, given to the top player in
collegiate women's hockey.
The game against ninth-place St. Lawrence was the next day. Early in
the second period, the teams were locked in a 1-1 battle. That's when head
coach Jeff Kam-persal '92 reunited his top scoring line of Coughlin, Abbey
Fox '01 and leading point-scorer Andrea Kil-bourne '02. The match-making
paid off as the trio notched the next two goals, and defenseman Dani Holt-schlag
'00 added an empty-netter for the 4-1 playoff-clinching win. "A lot
of hockey is about chemistry. If things aren't going well, Jeff will switch
the lines up," said Holtschlag, the restrained, self-proclaimed "polar
opposite" of fellow assistant captain Marshman.
As the postseason approaches, Kampersal is emphasizing a return to basics:
dumping the puck in, skating hard, putting shots on goal. It is the formula
that produced victories earlier in the season against strong Brown and Northeastern
squads. For their part, Holtschlag and Marshman would like to see the team
improve its focus and attention to detail.
"It's all discipline at this point," Holtschlag says. "It's
a matter of being mentally tough. We have to step up, knowing that there's
pressure." Adds Marshman, "Jeff has already given us everything.
It's a matter of taking those things and mastering them. You take a power
play -- one weak pass off a stick can ruin it. It's a matter of solidifying,
making perfect. This is the time to peak."
Meanwhile, the celebration can wait.
-- Mike Jackman '92
Swimming splits at H-Y-Ps, looks
ahead to Easterns
If there is a better way to go into the Ivy League Swimming Championships
than on the heels of a dominant victory in the H-Y-P meet, the Tiger women
would love to know about it. Coach Susan Teeter's squad owned the pool in
New Haven on February 6, beating Harvard 189-111 and topping the host Elis
186-114 in the Tigers' last competition before the February 25-27 league
championships.
The standout performance of the meet belonged to freshman Jenny Macaulay.
The native of Etobicoke, Ontario brought home three first-place finishes,
in the 100-meter breaststroke (1:05.45), the 200-meter breaststroke (2:19.60),
and the 200-meter individual medley (2:06.00). "She's a real talent,"
Teeter says. "Most of the kids say, 'I'm glad she's on my team, because
I wouldn't want to swim against her.'"
The Tigers had prepared for the meet without the shave-and-taper process
common for big events. "If we had shaved everyone for the H-Y-P meet,
the chances of us coming back two and a half weeks later for the Ivy championships
and being good would have been much smaller," Teeter says. "You
have to hope as a coach that you can motivate your athletes enough without
the shave that they can get up against swimmers who might be shaved and
win."
The upcoming Ivy Championships will give Brown a chance to seek revenge
for their 157-139 loss to the Tigers in the December Princeton Invitational.
"Brown is the team to beat at the Ivy Championships," Teeter says.
"They've been the winner for the past three years. I think we kind
of woke them up. It's definitely theirs to win and ours to take away from
them."
The Tigers will have more than their usual cadre of supporters at the
meet, which is celebrating the Silver Anniversary of women's championships
in the Ivy League. "We have a large number of alumni coming back, some
who will be seeing DeNunzio Pool for the first time," Teeter says.
"We've also picked our own [all-time] Silver Anniversary swimming and
diving team, and I would say 95 percent of that team is coming back to see
the meet."
The H-Y-P meet was not a happy one for the men's team, which lost to
both challengers. Princeton ended the meet with 89 points to Harvard's 205
and Yale's 198. Most of the Tigers' top swimmers made the strategic decision
not to shave for the meet, which proved costly. A bright spot was junior
Andy Shyong, who won both the one-meter and three-meter diving competitions
with scores of 259.40 and 276.25, respectively. The men hope their decision
not to shave will pay off at Easterns, scheduled for March 4-6 at Harvard.
-- Rob Garver
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