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Web Exclusives: From the Cheap Seats a PAW web exclusive column by Matt Golden '94 (email: golden2@erols.com) November 8, 2000 Abandon
ship! How bad can it get for the Princeton men's basketball program? Pretty bad! After what seems like decades of Ivy League dominance and an emergence as the NCAA tournament's most beloved Cinderella, the mighty vessel that is Tiger basketball has sprung a leak and is taking on water fast. This past summer was a tenuous period for the Tiger hoops program. The possibility of star center Chris Young '02 signing a professional baseball contract and giving up his basketball eligibility hung over the program like a threatening storm cloud. There were rumblings, since last spring, that freshman standout Spencer Gloger '03 was yearning for his sunny California home and was considering a transfer. Mason Rocca '00 graduated, and Ray Robbins '03 was taking a leave of absence from school for the 2000-01 academic year. But when the Pittsburgh Pirates finally convinced Young to put his John Hancock on a contract in late August, that storm cloud grew quickly into a full-blown monsoon. With Young out of the picture, head coach Bill Carmody jumped at Northwestern's long-term, big money contract offer and took his 92-25 career record to the Big Ten. Carmody was a candidate, last year, for the vacant Notre Dame job and figured to garner attention from many high-profile programs in the future - as long as the Tigers kept winning. But minus his star player, Carmody opted for the bird in hand - Northwestern - rather than holding out for a better opportunity. Gloger, oddly enough, flew cross-country to begin fall semester classes at Princeton before finally deciding to withdraw and transfer to UCLA, a school that had offered him a basketball scholarship during his senior year of high school. Gloger could have been a very good player in the Ivy League, but it's hard to imagine the six-foot, six-inch, stand-still shooter making much of an impact for the Bruins - especially after sitting out a year as is required of transfers by the NCAA. In addition to the Tigers' other woes, Ahmed El-Nokali '02, the team's starting point guard, has been hampered throughout the preseason by a stress fracture that he suffered last spring. This likely means that when the Tigers open play with a preseason NIT game at Duke on November 14, things could get ugly very quickly. Other than C.J. Chapman '01 and Nate Walton '01, the Tigers are very inexperienced, both on the court and on the sidelines. Unless Nate plays like his Hall-of-Fame father, Bill Walton, and new head coach John Thompson III '88 intimidates the Dukies, as his Hall-of-Fame father and legendary Georgetown coach John Thompson did his Big East rivals, this one will be over before the Tigers have a chance to break a sweat. Make no mistake. The problems don't end with the Duke game. Princeton plays a rigorous schedule which includes eight teams that qualified for postseason play last year. This program is in for a long and possibly loss-filled season. The question that remains is: Will Tiger fans abandon the sinking ship this winter, or will they stand by Thompson and ride out the storm? By Matt Golden '94
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