Pete Carril Named to Hall of Fame
Longtime Tiger basketball coach is now "a quartermaster" for the NBA's Sacramento Kings

Princeton coaching legend Pete Carril was named to the Basketball Hall of Fame in a ceremony in New York City on February 4. Carril and six other honorees will be inducted during ceremonies to be held on September 29 in Springfield, Massachusetts. In nearly three decades as head coach of the Tigers, Carril compiled a record of 525-273, the only Division I coach to record as many as 500 wins without the benefit of athletic scholarships.
Dan White '65's book Play to Win, a profile of Carril's career through the late 1970s, contains a description of the coach that reveals one of the reasons behind his success. That success-and the fact that it was Carril himself who gave the description-reveals why he was a legend even before the Hall of Fame honored him last month: "In the sports world there is a lot of egotism, a lot of drive for recognition," said Carril. "I am an erratic rock. Other coaches want to be organized. I want to be unorganized. They want to be the quintessence of sartorial splendor. Me, I want to look like a bum." Maybe he did look like a bum at times. He didn't coach like one.
The following article-from the next chapter in Carril's life-is excerpted from one that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 18, 1996.

Pete Carril in the NBA. The thought strains the brain cells, contorts common sense. If ever there was a cockeyed look at the world, it's that: Pete Carril in the NBA. The absurdity of it is enough to make us want to know more.
Carril is the anti-NBA. He's the anti-scholarship, anti-cheat, anti-playground, anti-selfish coach who always sat on the bench looking like he was about to pass a stone. The man is as collegiate as a blue book.
The idea of the 65-year-old Carril standing in front of a group of fabulously talented millionaires extolling the virtues of the back-door play is too much.
Listen up, fellas. This is how we did it back at Princeton.
He coached at Princeton for 29 years without ever having an athletic scholarship as a coercion tool, and still he managed to wedge his way into 11 NCAA Tournaments. His teams beat teams they weren't supposed to beat and almost beat teams that were supposed to annihilate them, and there was always just one reason: Carril.
His players were interchangeable parts, college kids who moved from spot to spot like pegs on a board. They would move two, three, four times, stopping only when faced with an open layup or a free 12-footer.
At Princeton, his players shared traits: They weren't fast enough, they weren't tall enough, and most of them were cursed with basketball's most debilitating condition-options.
They were already rich, most of them. They were smart. They were going somewhere that had nothing to do with basketball. People would work for them someday. What did they need with basketball?
But Carril made them care about basketball, and other things. One former player said the hardest thing about playing for Carril was "being prepared for an assessment not just of your athletic ability but of your character as well."
Are the Kings ready for that? Will he critique their habits, their night life, their wardrobes?
"I don't have any sense of urgency about this," Carril says. "I feel as the flow of my life here continues, I'll have something productive to say at some point. I can only hope that, at the end of the year, [Kings' head coach] Garry [St. Jean] comes up to me and says, 'You did a good job. You added something.' If I don't-if I'm dejected and depressed-I'll just retire again."
Carril was hired by Kings general manager [and former Tiger guard] Geoff Petrie ['70]. Petrie believes Carril's knowledge of the game is imminently transferable to the NBA style, a claim Carril is not ready to make.
"I have an awful lot to learn," Carril says. "It's hard to believe after all these years, but it's true."
For one thing, he is sitting in the dark. He has no office. He is sitting in a corner cubicle that looks like it was designed for a guy with a lot of pens in his shirt pocket. He is watching tapes of NBA games, which shouldn't surprise anyone, and he is diagramming plays on a tablet that sits on the table in front of him.
"What goes on in this league shouldn't be that alien to what I think."
The room is too clean, too antiseptic. Carril needs ashtrays and clutter, a few broken pencils, maybe even some empty takeout cartons. His teams' organization was always in direct contrast to their coach's appearance; while the players were running intricate sets with their heavy-footed precision, their coach was coming unraveled on the sideline. Once last year, during the same game at which he announced his retirement from Princeton, Carril reacted to an especially heinous play by hiding his head behind the bunting that hung from the scorer's table.
He turns off the television. A maintenance man walks in, and Carril asks him when his desk will be finished.
The man is not in charge of desks.
"You a light guy?" Carril asks.
"I'm a light guy," he says.
"You gonna put some lights in here?" Carril asks.
The man looks puzzled. He walks to the door and flips a switch. A bank of overhead lights flick on.
"That's better," Carril says in perfect stride; he gives away nothing.
Carril definitely leans toward the esoteric. There is always a way to answer the question without actually addressing it. Some of the answers are circuitous, like a rhetoric theorem gone haywire. But somehow, they always get back to the point.
"When you're a head coach, it's like being in the infantry," he says. "You get shot at and it's dangerous. An assistant coach is like being in the quartermaster's. You bring up the blankets and the supplies, and you don't get shot at. I was in the infantry for 43 years; I've had enough combat."
On beating teams such as UCLA in last year's tournament, or giving No. 1 Georgetown a major scare in the first round of 1989 before losing by one point, he says: "If you look at the great engineering feats in history, maybe the Aswan Dam and the Panama Canal, you'll see that the task was so difficult that the reward for success was commensurate with the enormity of the achievement."
Princeton was good to him. He has a nice retirement. He doesn't need the money. He doesn't need the hassles of recruiting. He won't ever walk into a high school kid's house and try to convince him to go to Princeton.
And that's why this might be the perfect gig for Carril, despite the incongruity of it all. He doesn't need anything that goes with the game, but there's another factor he can't sidestep: He needs the game itself.
"I love the flow of this game-the passing, the teamwork," he says. "I like the way the game makes you use more parts of your body than any other game. A center fielder in the major leagues might jump over the wall to steal a home run five times a year. In this game, every guy has jumped like that 50 times in the first five minutes.
"I don't know what it is about this game, but I do know it's been my life. That's all there is for me. I'd rather watch a good basketball game than do anything else in life. I guess that's why I'm here."
-Tim Keown

Early Wins Will Be Crucial for Men's and Women's Lacrosse
For the men's and women's lacrosse teams, a single goal stands out from the hundreds each scored last season. The men's goal, a tally from Jesse Hubbard '98 just 34 seconds into overtime in the national title game, ended their season the instant it entered the net. The women's, a game-tying score by Abigail Gutstein '96 that was disallowed by a referee in the closing moments of their national semifinal, started a controversy that changed the rules of the game (a Maryland player had illegally interfered-such a play will now result in the player's ejection from the contest). One goal gave men's coach Bill Tierney his third national championship. The other cost women's coach Chris Sailer a chance at her second. Eight months later, the teams' tracks continue to diverge, but their fates could come back together in May-both coaches believe they'll make it to the Final Four again.
If the chief difference between the teams at the end of last year came down to a goal, the difference at the start of this one is goal-scoring. In 1996 both had outstanding trios of attacks. But in 1997, Abigail Gutstein and Lisa Rebane have graduated and Cristy Samaras '97 is taking a year off-together they accounted for 64 percent of the team's tallies. "We don't have the big guns this year," says Sailer, so the Tigers will ask all five players in attack positions to score goals. According to the coach, veterans Casey Coleman '97 and Melissa Cully '98 will each "take on a scoring load," while six other juniors and sophomores will tutor newcomer Ani Mason '00. "We want to have a combination of ways to attack," explains Sailer. "I want the team to make good decisions, take reasonable risks, and have the patience and discipline to work the opponent's defense and pick good opportunities to score."
For the men, it's the opposite; they have their most explosive attack group ever, according to Tierney, in juniors Jesse Hubbard, Chris Massey, and Jon Hess, who scored 87 percent of Princeton's goals. Joining them are midfielders Todd Eichelberger '97 and Lorne Smith '99, both proven scorers in their own right. Captain Jason Osier '97 will join them once he completes his stint as a guard on the basketball team. "Lots of teams have one or two good offensive players," says Tierney. "When you put our team out on the field, we have five or six. We'll see some trick defenses, maybe two short-stick defenders trying to shut off a couple of our guys, but that will leave a lot of room for the other four." Princeton begins the year ranked number one in polls, due largely to the power of the offensive unit.
On defense, the men and women are more alike than not. Each has a tough-minded, experienced core and a talented supporting cast. The men will be led by captain Becket Wolf '97, joined by the speedy Christian Cook '98, Kurt Lunkenheimer '99, and John Harrington '99. "Because of our defensive style, there's no one guy who can go and take the ball away," says Tierney. "But in our system we don't want that." Instead of relying on hard checking, the coach uses team defense to stop the opposition-he tells players to use their feet, force the tempo, and look for opportunities to double-team the player with the ball.
Sailer says defense will be the strength of the women's team. Cocaptains Janice Petrella '97 and Carter Marsh '97, a midfielder and a defender, respectively, bring a no-nonsense, hardworking style onto the field. Defender Corey Samaras '97 brings good stick-checking, and sophomores Johanna Deans and Lucy Small contribute speed and aggression. According to the coach, the Tigers will play a pressure defense that forces opponents to shoot and defends the middle of the field at all cost. Princeton's ability to limit the number of good shots that its goalie must stop will be crucial to the team's success.
That's especially true because at the heart of that defense, in goal, the women again have "a question mark," according to Sailer. "We will be breaking in a new goalie," she says. But it's a good year to do it since we have a good defense to play in front of her." Laura Field '00 is a strong possibility. The men return another proven performer in Patrick Cairns '97.
The two teams' extensive postseason experience will make them hard to beat, according to their coaches. But the Tigers won't be able to wait until the May tournament to hit their stride. Each will meet top national contenders in the opening weeks of the season and will also face challenges from within the league.
The men opened their season March 1 against a nationally ranked opponent whose lacrosse tradition is second to none, fourth-ranked Johns Hopkins, which may have its best team in years, according to Tierney. Princeton follows that with a rematch of last year's championship, meeting what Tierney calls "a talented and very motivated" Virginia team, which was ranked second in the preseason poll. Princeton's new turf field makes it possible for the Tigers' to host both games.
The team must be wary of its Ivy competition, as well. Two years ago, a defeat at Cornell cost Princeton a chance to host its quarterfinal game, and it subsequently lost at Syracuse. Contenders include Harvard, whose star attackman Mike Ferrucci will anchor the Crimson's title drive this year, and Yale, whose Rookie of the Year goalie, Joe Pilch, could challenge the Tigers' attack. Princeton will also have to worry about Brown and Cornell, who have posted upsets in recent years. Tierney expects that success will come if his team wins some games with its offense and some with its defense. "Balance is the toughest to stop," he says.
The women start March 6 with a challenging road trip, meeting three top-quality teams: Georgetown, Virginia, and James Madison. Although the women's tournament has been expanded from six teams to eight this year, it won't be any easier for Princeton to earn a bid from the selection committee, so any early mistakes could be costly. The Tigers' April games will be no easier-they will start the month with a surging Temple squad, and will face powerful Penn State and preseason title favorite Maryland at month's end. Ivy League challenges will come from Dartmouth, Brown, and Yale. "This year we have a lot of opportunity and a lot of need," says Sailer, "and players are stepping up. . . . This is a team that knows how to win, and one that is every bit as hungry as they were before we started to make it to the Final Four."
-Paul Hagar '91

Icemen Struggle in Stretch
The men's hockey team is sinking so fast there isn't even a chance to yell "abandon ship." The Tigers (14-7-2 overall, 9-6-1 ECAC), who were in first place in the Eastern College Athletic Conference as late as January 30, slipped to fifth place after a 3-2 loss to the struggling Brown Bears on February 8. Princeton had faced then-second-place Cornell on January 31 in its first game in three weeks, and the effect of the break was apparent, as they lost 4-2. The Tigers rebounded with a 5-2 win over Colgate the next night.
Princeton may have fallen four slots in the standings, but it sounds worse than it is. As of February 10, the ECAC lead was split four ways, among Cornell, Rensselaer, Vermont, and Clarkson, with the Tigers just three points back. They want to finish the regular season as one of the top four teams in the conference to get home-ice advantage for the playoffs, which began with a preliminary round on March 4, with quarter- and semifinal rounds on the two successive weekends. Critics wondered if the upstarts were really as good as early standings indicated, or if the Tigers would fade in the stretch. The time to prove their greatness is now, but the team is doing a poor job of convincing people.
In the matchup with Cornell, the Big Red scored five minutes into the game and led 4-0 until late in the third period, when Princeton finally came through to save some pride. With two minutes left in regulation, defenseman Dominique Auger '00 found the net to end the shutout; right wing Joe Pelle '98 got a second goal with six seconds left to play. Defensive lapses contributed to the goals, forcing goalie Erasmo Saltarelli '98 to make many stops. "Some of the goals were second- or third-shot goals," said teammate Craig Bradley '00. "We missed taking out players, and they took advantage of it."
The defeat was disappointing, but not surprising, since Cornell is a league powerhouse. Princeton's loss to Brown was unexpected, however. The Tigers had trouble breaking out of their zone and dictating the pace of five-on-five play, though they fared well on special teams, scoring both their goals on power plays and killing off all five of the Bruins' power-play opportunities. The Bears scored 14 seconds into the second period and got their second several minutes later. Late in the second, right wing Jean Verdon '97 found the net to close the gap to 2-1, but just 28 seconds later, Brown's Marty Clapton gave his team a 3-1 lead at the second intermission. The Tigers never recovered, losing 3-2. "We didn't play badly," Saltarelli said. "But other teams have stepped it up a notch, and we've been playing with a little less intensity."
The Tigers' stretch run was a tough one, though it gave them a chance to challenge several teams that were ahead of them in the standings. Princeton met Clarkson, Vermont, and Rensselaer late in February. For Princeton to right itself and claim home ice for the playoffs, it needed a concerted effort from the entire team.
-Shirley Wang '99

Lea Ann Drohan Embodies Resolve of Team
One might think that junior Lea Ann Drohan, the starting center on the women's basketball team, would be discouraged. She's been playing well, but her team (3-15 overall, 2-4 Ivy) has been stung with several close losses so far this season. Far from it. "There's nothing any team is going to throw at us that we can't handle," she assures questioners. Drohan's attitude is prevalent among this young team, which has impressed coach Liz Feeley as much for its spirit as for its great potential.
In a seven-game stretch in January and February, the team lost four of them by margins of three points or less, beginning with a 72-70 loss to Brown in Jadwin on January 10 (from which they rebounded to eke out a 53-52 win over Yale the next night). On January 29, after a break for exams, Princeton lost a ferocious battle with Rider University, 74-71. "That was a tough one," said junior captain Zakiya Pressley. "We really wanted it." The Tigers' effort was evident, especially on offense, as Drohan dominated on the inside-she had a team-high 18 points and 10 rebounds in the game-and guards Pressley and Kate Thirolf '00 showed their scoring talent, getting 12 and 11 points, respectively. Princeton had held a seven-point lead over Rider in the second half, but a weak defensive performance couldn't keep the Broncs at bay.
The following weekend, the Tigers hosted Cornell and did it again, suffering a 58-57 loss to the Big Red on January 31. The Tigers had led by 15 points, 53-38, with about seven minutes left, but Cornell's Kim Ruck and Carolyn Janiak combined for 20 points to get their team a one-point lead with 45 seconds to play. Leigh Washburn '00 grabbed an offensive rebound and put Princeton back on top by a point, but Ruck drew a foul with 7.5 seconds left and hit both free throws to seal the outcome.
The next night proved the Tigers' "resilience in the face of a heartbreaking loss," according to Feeley, as her young charges bounced back to get a 72-57 victory over the Lions. The team's youth makes its resolve in the face of disappointment more than a little surprising. These players have a presence on the court; they know exactly what they want to do, and how they'll accomplish their task. "We're not going to allow ourselves to get into any more one-, two-, or three-point games," says Drohan. "And if we do, we'll know how to handle it."
Drohan certainly knows something about not giving up. She started her basketball career in sixth grade in her church's league, playing on a second-string team her father started "for the kids who weren't good enough to play on the other one," according to Drohan. "Usually the coach's kid was the star, but that wasn't true for me-I was terrible." By the time she'd graduated from Shenendehowa High School in Ballston Lake, New York, Drohan had proven she could play (she chose Princeton over Colgate, among other suitors, rejecting an offer from Colgate's coach at the time, Liz Feeley). Her stellar sophomore year follows a frustrating freshman season in which she was sidelined with mononucleosis.
Drohan and her teammates may have let their confidence flag, however, after an excruciating 62-61 defeat at Dartmouth on February 7. They faced Harvard the next night and looked hesitant and overmatched. Defenders swatted balls out of the Tiger guards' hands and shoved Drohan and Washburn around in the paint like shuffleboard pieces. The undefeated Crimson trounced the visiting team, 80-53, a loss that took Princeton out of title contention.
Against the Big Green, Princeton had built a 30-20 lead at halftime and was dictating the pace of play; its opponents looked hesitant and confused. But the Big Green came back and was up a point, 59-60, with 1:09 left. A pullup jumper from Thirolf gave the Tigers a 61-60 lead.
With only two seconds remaining. Dartmouth had the ball out of bounds under its own basket. In desperation, the Big Green's Bess Tortolani, standing on the left edge of the free-throw lane, grabbed a wobbly lob inbounds. Off-balance, the forward could only fling off a desperation shot as she fell to the court with Drohan towering over her. It arched past the Princeton center's outstretched arms and fell through the basket as the buzzer sounded, leaving the Tigers to deal with another bitter loss.
A few days after the game, Drohan just smiled when asked about the team's morale. "We're a never-say-die group," she said. "None of us focuses on our record. When we go into a game, we're confident we can win."
Princeton will face Penn tonight in Jadwin Gymnasium in the team's last game of the season.
-Paul Hagar '91