Tale of the Tigers

Sporting News, The, March 16, 1998 by Steve Harrison

* Brian Earl, junior guard. He had so much trouble learning the offense as a freshman that he considered transferring. Good thing be didn't. At 6-2, he's the shortest of the starting five but is third on the team in scoring with 12.7 points a game.

* Gabe Lewullis junior forward. UCLA fans remember him as the one who took Goodrich's bounce pass for a backdoor layup that slayed the Bruins In the first round of the NCAA Tournament two years ago. An all-around handyman, he can score inside and out. He's one of the team's most accurate 3-point shooters at 43 percent and leads it in scoring with 14.1 points a game.

* Mitch Henderson, senior point guard. A true athlete--he was a quarterback in high school and was drafted by the New York Yankees as an outfielder in 1994--he also has speed. Just ask North Carolina's Shammond Williams, who watched Henderson zip past him like a super hero. "He's our best dribbler and best passer," Carmody says. "He sees things on the court that no one else sees." Like Goodrich, Henderson will have an outside shot at the NBA.

* James Mastaglio, senior swingman. Like everyone else but Goodrich, he's a versatile guard/forward who does a number of things well. He replaces Sydney Johnson, last year's Ivy League Player of the Year who is playing professionally in Italy. Mastaglio, who started as a freshman and sophomore but not as a junior, joined the other four and has meshed remarkably well.

These five carry a ridiculous load, each playing about 33 minutes a game. In the tournament, with the increased competition, those numbers will probably climb to about 37-38 minutes a game. (The bench suffered a big blow in late January when sophomore Mason Rocca, Goodrich's capable backup, broke his arm in practice. He will not return until next season.)

"It's the best Princeton team I've seen," says Rutgers coach Kevin Bannon, who watched his Scarlet Knights fall, 64-52, to the Tigers in November. "When you have a system as they do and you have upperclassmen running it, it's murder."

This offensive nirvana all started with the coaching staff looking for hidden high school gems. Once the coaches found them, they then had to convince them to pay for tuition. Princeton is initiating a program to help more middle-class students receive financial aid. Still, the price of one year--about $33,000--is more than enough to scare off many players. If a player can afford it, Carmody still must convince him to play in the Ivy League, which isn't easy when some think Princeton holds open tryouts to field a team.

"They do an unbelievable job of finding the kids who can play for them," says Manhattan coach John Leonard, whose Jaspers fell to Princeton, 77-48, in January. "Which just shows that the people evaluating high school talent look too much at whether a kid can run and jump."

As freshmen, before the players are taught skills tailored to the systems--a center is taught to make hooks in the lane, for instance-they go through a drill called the "dummy offense." To learn the offense, they walk through it again and again--without defenders. Even after a month of the dummy offense, youngsters still aren't expected to fully comprehend subtleties of the offense. After all, this thing was born 30 years ago under Pete Carril, and then passed to Carmody, a Princeton assistant for 15 seasons before taking the top job last season.