He done it: with the success of his Princeton offense, "Columbo" Pete Carril holds sway in Sacramento and New Jersey, the elites of both conferences

Basketball Digest, Summer, 2002 by Irwin Soonachan

IT'S ABOUT AN HOUR BEFORE the Sacramento Kings are scheduled to play a home game live on NBC, and assistant coach Pete Carril is underdressed. The 71-year-old Hall-of-Famer, best known for his 29-year run as head coach of Princeton, is wearing a black T-shirt and plain, grey pants, by his own admission not quite up to snuff for national television. A Kings staffer runs to the team's offices to find a blazer that Carril remembers stowing away somewhere. He returns carrying a faded sport coat that's a shade of light green resembling stale string beans. And it definitely doesn't match the coach's outfit.

Carril holds it up for a moment, and briefly ponders what to do.

"Pfft, what do I care?" he asks no one in particular, and puts it on.

Carril cares about passing, dribbling, and shooting. He cares about unselfish team play. He cares about getting his players to bring their lunch buckets every night He has never cared about fashion.

"I don't deal in bull [manure]," he says.

It's a claim to which his current and former players attest. In the early '70s, prep star Armond Hill, an All-City point guard in New York, looked into the bleachers during a game to see Carril, typically unfashionable in a bow tie. Hill was being recruited by several national powers, but a few words with Carril after that night's game all but sealed his future as a Tiger.

"He came down and told me everything I was doing wrong," says Hill, now the head coach at Columbia University. "Left-hand dribble needed work, two-hand chest pass needed snap, I needed to improve my shot ... The other coaches were trying to sugarcoat me. He was the only guy who told me the truth."

When he arrived at Princeton in 1967, Carril's use of certain colloquialisms, distaste for artifice, and quirky style of dress were sometimes hard to swallow for the white buckskin-clad Ivy League set. He took over for Butch van Breda Kolff, who left to coach the Los Angeles Lakers after leading Princeton to the Final Four with the help of Bill Bradley. Carril, who had played for van Breda Kolff at Lafayette College, was handpicked by van Breda Kolff as his successor, despite Carril only having one year of college coaching experience--an 11-12 season at Lehigh. Carril's hard-nosed demeanor didn't always fit Princeton's patrician surroundings.

"Pete had a very blue-collar, aggressive style," says former Princeton and NBA star Geoff Petrie, who was recruited by van Breda Kolff but played for Carril. "It took some adjustment for people at Princeton."

Success softened the impact Carril had Princeton at or near the top of the Ivy League almost every year. Ivy League teams don't offer scholarships, but Carril's Princeton squads consistently beat major-conference teams stacked with top-shelf talent. In 1972 they beat a North Carolina team that featured Bob McAdoo, Bobby Jones, and George Karl. With Hill, Princeton won the 1975 NIT and in 1976 lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament to top-seeded and then-undefeated Rutgers by a single point.

The wins help explain his hopelessly out-of-date wardrobe: For many years, Carril had a superstition that if his teams won, it was good luck to keep wearing the same clothes. In a fashion sense, Carril was a victim of his own success.

As head coach at Reading High School in Pennsylvania, he compiled a 145-42 record from 1959 to 1966, and wore the same blazer to every game. At Princeton, his trademark ensemble became a worn-out Princeton sweatshirt, bow tie, trench coat, and flop hat that could be tucked away in the pocket of his coal He was known around campus as "Columbo," after the similarly attired TV detective.

Carril's players were unwittingly subject to his fashion restrictions. Hank Towns, athletic equipment supervisor for Princeton since 1970, says Carril hated it when his players got new uniforms.

"Buying uniforms for Pete Carril was like asking him for money," Towns says. "He used to say, `It doesn't matter what you wear as long as you put the ball in the basket.'"

In the mid-1980s, Towns purchased new road uniforms for the team, but Carril told him to keep them in the closet Finally, the players convinced Towns to smuggle the uniforms to them for the last game of the season--a game in which the Ivy League title was on the line. They went through pregame warmups with their sweats on, and then, in the huddle before the start of the game, took their sweats off to reveal the contraband uniforms. Carril did a double take, and then exclaimed, `That [blankety blank] Hank Towns!"

"He was real mad," Towns says. "We won, but we never wore those uniforms again."

By that time it was apparent that Carril could no longer land top-notch talent at Princeton. Hill, who went onto become a first-round NBA draft choice, was the last major recruit he reeled in. Tuition at Princeton was steadily rising, and finding players who could afford to attend proved difficult. To continue winning, Carril had to move Princeton away from the style of play--a fast-paced offense inspired largely by the Red Auerbach's Boston Celtics and Red Holzman's New York Knicks, and an in-your-shirt man-to-man defense--he brought there.