Cagers capture title at Cancer Classic
Tigers start strong, but how will they fare in Ivy race?
When we last saw the men's basketball team, after losing to Cal-Berkeley in the first round of the NCAA tournament, the feeling was that the season had ended too soon. Despite a wonderful rookie season, Coach Bill Carmody wished he had one or two more games with Ivy Player of the Year Sydney Johnson '97 and the rest of the 24-4 team.
Perhaps in response (at least subconsciously) to that wish, Carmody and this year's edition of the basketball team (2-0 overall, 0-0 Ivy) began official play on November 11, earlier than any year since 1941. If the team's start is any indication, Princeton, with its four returning starters, should be wearing smiles well into the month of March.
Of course, there are other reasons why the team began its season on Veterans' Day. In the brave new world of college basketball in the 1990s, it's never too early if there's a TV-friendly game. So with ESPN2's cameras courtside at the Continental Airlines Arena, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, the Tigers took on the University of Texas, ranked 22nd in the preseason polls.
But it would be inaccurate to say that November 11th was the team's first game this year, since the Tigers' trip to Italy this summer. While they went 4-5 against European pro teams from Italy and Switzerland, the record reflects the level of the competition, which included players like Ken Barlow and David Rivers from Notre Dame, and former NBA scoring champ Dominique Wilkins.
Another American ex-pat whom the Tigers faced was the aforementioned Johnson, who signed with Gorizia of the Italian league. Princeton beat Gorizia, 78-76, despite Johnson's 21 minutes off the Gorizia bench.
Tigers Rip Runnin' Horns
Upon returning back to the States in early September, the Tigers returned to classes, then began preparing for the official opener, facing Texas at the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic. In the first half, the team looked as though it had lost a step in Italy, shooting an abysmal 35.7 percent from the field and missing a number of free throws. Princeton trailed by nine points at one point in the second quarter before storming back with a 16-6 third quarter to take the lead. (Games played in November this year used several experimental rules--including four 10-minute quarters, shorter timeouts, and a 40-second shot clock--designed to increase the speed of play. The NCAA apparently thinks it must decrease the time needed to play these early games as the length of the season increases.)
The Tigers attacked the basket all game and ended up shooting 27 foul shots to the Runnin' Horns' five. As important, the Tigers battled Texas to a virtual standoff on the boards with strong rebounding. Such aggressive play--call it "Carmody ball"--shows Princeton will continue the more relaxed approach to the game fans saw last year, which is slightly removed from the rigid system of Pete Carril.
Guard Brian Earl '99 has been one of the beneficiaries of Carmody ball, and he added two three-pointers in the decisive third quarter against Texas. James Mastaglio '98, playing with a shoulder that was heavily taped, capped the victory when he gathered in a pass over the top of the Texas press and proceeded to dunk. Mastaglio and Earl each had 15 points to lead the Tigers.
If some things have changed in the Carmody era, other things haven't: like Pete Carril, Carmody seems reluctant to use his bench. Against Texas, the coach played his five starters for all but six minutes of the game. Mason Rocca '00 replaced center Steve Goodrich '98 for two minutes, and Nate Walton '00 spelled forward Gabe Lewullis '99 for four. Earl, Mastaglio, and Mitch Henderson '98 played all 40 minutes. When the Tigers returned the next night to play North Carolina State (which had upset number-19 Georgia just before the Texas-Princeton game), fatigue was expected to be a factor.
Taking the N.C. challenge
If the game against Texas was one of the best-played wins this group of Tiger players has had, the win over N.C. State the next night has to be considered one of the ugliest. State's switching, trapping defense meant the Tigers were unable to get Goodrich, a first-team all-Ivy pick last year, involved in the offense. As Carmody said after the game, "I can't remember playing a team that guards as well as North Carolina State. They were smothering Goodrich, and they decided that they weren't going to let him beat them."
After 39 minutes and 57.3 seconds, Goodrich found a way to beat N.C. State, although he did it without the ball. Goodrich's back screen on Ishua Benjamin freed up Earl, and Lewullis found Earl standing alone under the basket for the winning score. As Lewullis said later, "If I didn't throw it to him, I would have gotten killed." (He would have said the same thing during the Carril era.) Princeton survived two attempts in the last 2.7 seconds to escape with a 38-36 win.
The two wins showed the beat will go on for this team despite the graduation of Johnson. So far the team's biggest question mark is its bench. Rocca has the misfortune of backing up Goodrich, the probable 1998 Ivy player of the year. Guards Henderson and Earl will play as much as injuries and fouls permit--C. J. Chapman '01 and Lance Walters '01 may work into the rotation later in the year.
In the end, though, it should be the Tigers smiling in March. The experience that Princeton exhibited over Texas and N. C. State should prove too much for league opponents, so long as Carmody can rely on his bench. Only Harvard and Penn can make legitimate--if not quite persuasive--arguments that they can beat the Tigers in the Ivy race. The Tigers began their 1997-98 basketball odyssey in Rome in August, and before it ends, eight months later in March, they are likely to put long faces on almost every opponent they meet.
--Matt Henshon '91
Matt Henshon played forward for the Tigers from 1987-91. He is an attorney in Boston.
Field hockey makes NCAA Final Four after wins over
Maryland and Boston College
Princeton is headed back to the Final Four this year, after an impressive 4-0 victory at fourth-seeded Maryland on November 16 in the second round of the NCAA tournament. The fifth-seeded Tigers (16-3 overall, 7-0 Ivy) kept the dangerous Terrapin team on its heels through most of the game with an aggressive, scrambling defense and superlative close guarding. Princeton forwards challenged Maryland's swing passes, while its midfielders and defenders cut off through passes and sealed off the sidelines. Goalie Gia Fruscione '00 was outstanding, making several key saves to keep the Terps off the scoreboard. The win came only a month after Maryland had beaten Princeton, 7-2, in the regular season. The Tigers had defeated Boston College, 3-2, in the first round, on November 15.
Cocaptain Amy MacFarlane '98 got the team's first goal on a penalty corner with 12:52 in the first half. Christine Hunsicker '99 and Annemarie Reich '99 assisted. About seven minutes later, attack Hilary Matson '01 stole a Terp pass and drove toward the goal, then shoved the ball over to attack Kirsty Hale '99, who somehow squibbed it in while she was falling down with the Maryland goalie on top of her.
Down two goals, the Terps began to play scared, trying to force through passes and generate scoring chances. At the start of the second half, Maryland turned up the pressure a notch, attacking Princeton's goal, but the Tigers responded with counterattacks of their own.
After MacFarlane scored on a penalty corner (assisted by cocaptain Kathleen Kelly '98 and Hale) 12 minutes into the second half, Princeton began to smell a win that appeared unthinkable when the teams last met. Maryland pulled its goalie for an extra attacker with 13 minutes left, but couldn't get past the defense. Hunsicker finished the scoring on a penalty stroke with 9:27 left.
Referring to Princeton's upset wins a year ago, which propelled it to its first Final Four, Coach Beth Bozman said this one felt "just as good," and credited her team's character: "We were not about to back down. . . . This team wanted to show what it was capable of. Their determination, desire, and strength was great to watch."
Princeton met North Carolina in the national semifinal game on November 21 in Storrs, Connecticut--a rematch of last year's championship.
--Paul Hagar '91
Volleyball wins Ivy title;
cross-country wins NCAA regional meet
After storming into the finals of the Ivy tournament without losing a game, the volleyball team had its back to the wall after dropping two games to Dartmouth. But Princeton took three straight to earn the title, including a 17-15 win in the fifth, giving the Tigers and their coach, Glenn Nelson (profiled on page 27), an NCAA-tourney bid. At press time, the time and site of their first-round match had not been announced.
Led by Tony Barroco '98, the men's cross-country team, now ranked 22nd in the nation, won the NCAA mid-Atlantic regional meet at Penn State on November 15. The win qualified Princeton for Nationals (November 24 in Furman, South Carolina) for the first time since 1983.
Football splits against Ivy rivals
They say you can't fool Mother Nature. What they don't say is that she is free to fool with you. Princeton (5-4 overall, 2-4 Ivy) is 5-0 when the clouds pass harmlessly overhead, but has a soggy 0-4 mark when rain falls. Against Penn and Yale, that pattern held: the Tigers lost, 20-17, in a drizzle at Penn November 8, but shut out Yale, 9-0, in a dry Giants Stadium a week later.
Mother Nature has picked Princeton's most important games to intervene. The Tigers lost their opener at Cornell; enjoyed the sunshine in their three wins against the Patriot League and against Ivy doormat Brown; then suffered three straight losses on successive wet weekends at Harvard (5-0 Ivy), Columbia (2-4), and Penn (4-2), by a combined total of just nine points. Each defeat left the Tigers feeling as if they could compete for the title. Princeton fell to Harvard 14-12; no other Ivy team has come within 17 points of the Crimson. But as the losses mounted, the team has had to lower its sights. For the last four weeks, "we keep saying, 'All right, this is the game. We can't lose this game,' " said defensive tackle Mark Whaling '98. When Princeton lost to Harvard, "it was 'All right, we'll go 8-2. Nobody gave us a shot to go 8-2.' " After the loss at Columbia, "It was 'We'll go 7-3 . . .' " Finally, after a defeat at Penn eliminated the Tigers from the Ivy race, it was "OK, let's just beat Yale," said Whaling.
In Princeton's 120th game against Yale (only Lafayette and Lehigh have played more games against each other), the Tigers did just that. The Meadowlands served as home because the Tigers, of course, have no home this year. The players were excited to play in Giants Stadium--where the NFL's New York Giants and Jets play--even though it meant homecoming was 44 miles away and though only 7,731 filled a stadium that held 10 times that many the next day when the Giants beat the Arizona Cardinals.
Harry Nakielny '98, from Sayreville, New Jersey, hoped to get the start at quarterback, despite the ribs he had bruised at Penn. He hadn't practiced all week, in order to protect them, and though he threw fine in pregame warmups, he and Coach Steve Tosches knew one hard hit could knock him out of the game. As a result, John Burnham '99, who'd had a brilliant second half at Penn in relief of Nakielny, got his first varsity start.
Early in the game, Burnham had opportunities to stake a claim to the 1998 starting job. He began five different drives with the ball past Princeton's 40-yard line, the first on Yale's 12-yard line after senior Tom Ludwig returned a punt 49 yards. That drive lasted just two plays, after no one blocked Bulldog linebacker Scott Benton, who tipped the ball away as Burnham faked a handoff to tailback Gerry Giurato '00. Yale's Adam Hernandez recovered the fumble.
Other than that miscue, Burnham did fine, including leading an 11-play, 47-yard drive to set up a 21-yard field goal by Alex Sierk '99. But dropped passes, penalties, and an anemic rushing attack left the Tigers with just a 3-0 lead at halftime.
The teams switched roles in the second half: Yale started inside Tiger territory three times, Princeton's defense held the Bulldogs to three plays and a punt each time, and the Tiger offense fought poor field position all half.
With 5:46 to go in the third quarter, Tosches took a chance, replacing Burnham with Nakielny. Nakielny's second play was a pitch that Giurato dropped, and Nakielny fell on the ball at his own six-yard line, narrowly avoiding disaster. On the next drive, Tosches made his second key decision; he installed Nathan McGlothlin '99 as the tailback. McGlothlin was the Tigers' leading rusher from a year ago, but had not carried the ball once in 1997 before the Yale game.
On a crucial, fourth-quarter drive, McGlothlin got the ball for seven of nine plays, and Princeton moved from its own 19 to Yale's 30-yard line. All that rushing set Yale up to expect another run, but Nakielny faked the hand-off and lofted a spiral to Philip Wendler '00 for a TD. Sierk missed the point after, making the final score 9-0.
COMEBACK AT PENN
At Penn, Princeton's offense again struggled early, hampered by a running game that bumbled for negative-nine yards rushing on 19 carries in the first half. Nakielny's fumble on a sack led to a Penn field goal in the first quarter. Then the Tiger secondary gave up two long passes on an 80-yard TD drive in the second quarter--the longest drive allowed by the defense all year. Nakielny hurt his ribs in the second quarter, and Tosches inserted Burnham to start the second half.
Penn had prepared for the drop-back style of Nakielny and had trouble with Burnham's ability to scramble. In the third quarter, Sierk kicked a 33-yard field goal, but a 57-yard run by Penn's Jim Finn set up a TD to make the score 17-3. It was all Burnham and Sierk after that. Sierk connected on two more field goals and Burnham ran 13 yards for a touchdown when he could not find an open receiver.
With under six minutes to go and the score tied at 17-17, the stunned crowd watched Princeton move the ball to the Quaker 28-yard line and set up for a 46-yard field goal attempt for Sierk (then the only placekicker in all of college football not to have missed a kick; he'd hit 14 of 14 field goals and 10 of 10 extra points). The snap was on target and Sierk later said he hit it well, but Penn's John Bishop blocked the kick. The Quakers recovered on Princeton's 47-yard line with 2:38 left in the game, and Finn ran five times to set up a 34-yard field-goal try with just four ticks on the clock. Tosches called two successive timeouts to make Penn's kicker nervous, but he delivered, insuring Tosches would have his third sub-.500 Ivy record in 10 years.
--Phillip Thune '92
Coach profile: "Laid-back" Glenn Nelson leads volleyball
In july, men's volleyball team members and alumni gathered in Los Angeles to honor coach Glenn Nelson, now in his 20th year of coaching. They expressed their appreciation and paid tribute to Nelson's past accomplishments, which encompass nearly the entirety of volleyball at Princeton. His tenure has united the men's and women's teams, so that the past, present, and foreseeable future of Tiger volleyball all lie under his singular command.
It all began in 1977, when the men's club team endeavored to hire a coach who could substitute a modicum of structure for its haphazard regimen of practices. They chose Nelson, a Trenton, New Jersey, native only a few years their senior, and he immediately began to impart the wisdom and competitive spirit he'd acquired as the team captain at Orange Coast Junior College from 1970 to 1972.
"I was in the right place at the right time," Nelson said. "We'll see if I continue to be in the right place at the right time."
Though his original hiring circumvented athletic-department channels, Nelson had assumed official leadership of the women's varsity team within five years. Since then, he's won seven Ivy titles with the women (including this year's crown, won November 16) and all but muffled the echoes of Dillon Gym's last top-ranked team--a basketball squad that featured Bill Bradley '65--in taking his club-varsity men's team to a grossly underrated number-14 ranking at the end of last season.
In all that time, Nelson has never used a clipboard, never blown a whistle, and never anguished over game film or statistics. Nor has he, in 15 years with the women and 20 with the men--ever had to fret over a losing season: his composite record in all those years is 774-181 (.810). One of the only coaches in the NCAA to head both a women's and a men's varsity team, Nelson unofficially ranks third in all-time wins among men's volleyball coaches and in the top 20 among women's. He doesn't exactly ruminate on his place in history, so long as he wins on any given night. Upon his 400th men's victory (a 3-1 win over Long Island University-Southhampton in March of this year), he said, "You're no good if you've been around as long as me and don't have 400 wins."
Nelson's style of coaching is as far from the discipline and rigidity of some volleyball programs as the palms of California are from the spires of Dillon Gym. His laid-back approach and organic practices focus on perfecting an old-school, ball-control game, while his sense of perspective and respect for players' academic lives makes him "the perfect Princeton coach," according to Trevor Brazier '95.
Insulated by the relative obscurity of the sport, Nelson adheres only to those Princeton traditions that include winning. His success with high-school stars like Jeff Cooper '98, Kristin Spataro '96, and Joe McCarthy '97, each of whom chose Princeton over more-typical powerhouse programs, attest that talent can thrive without an overly rigid structure. "He is the ideal antidote for the potentially isolating, incestuous, self-contained, self-absorbed, narrow stuffiness that is always a threat to develop at Princeton," said Peter Greenhill '81. "He brings a dose of the outside world to the halls of ivy."
--Josh Stephens '97
Scoreboard and Highlights
M. basketball
(2-0 overall, 0-0 Ivy)
Coaches vs. Cancer Classic-1st
W vs. Texas, 62-56
W vs. N.C. State, 38-36
M. cross country*
(8-5 overall, 2-3 Ivy)
NCAA Regionals-1st
Football
(4-4 overall, 1-3 Ivy)
L at Penn, 17-20
W vs. Yale, 9-0
Field Hockey*
(16-3 overall, 7-0 Ivy)
W vs. Columbia, 12-0
W at Penn, 4-2
NCAAs
W vs. Boston Coll., 3-2
W at Maryland, 4-0
M. ice hockey
(3-0-2 overall, 1-0-2 ecac)
T vs. St. Lawrence, 2-2
W vs. Clarkson, 3-2
T vs. Harvard, 3-3
W vs. Brown, 6-5 (ot)
W. ice hockey
(2-2 overall, 2-2 ecac, 1-1 Ivy)
L vs. Cornell, 1-4
W vs. St. Lawrence, 6-3
W vs. Harvard, 5-2
L vs. Northeastern, 5-7
Ltwt. Football
(0-6 overall, 0-4 elfl)
L vs. Penn, 8-23
M. Soccer
(6-6-1 overall, 1-2-1 Ivy)
L vs. American, 1-2 (ot)
W at Penn, 1-0
W vs. Yale, 3-2
W. Soccer
(10-6-1 overall, 3-4 Ivy)
W at Lafayette, 4-0
L at Penn, 3-2
W. Volleyball*
(17-5 overall, 6-1 Ivy)
Lehigh Tourn.-1st
W vs. Lehigh, 3-0
W vs. Lafayette, 3-0
W vs. Coppin St., 3-0
W vs. Fairfield, 3-0
Ivy League Tourn.-1st
W vs. Cornell, 3-0
W vs. Penn, 3-0
W vs. Yale, 3-0
W vs. Dartmouth, 3-2
*League champions
M. Ice Hockey: Erasmo Saltarelli '98 named ECAC/Heaton Goaltender of Week 11/3. W. Ice Hockey: forward Ali Coughlin '99 scored hat trick in win over St. Lawrence. Volleyball: Ayesha Attoh '98, Stephanie Edwards '98, & Rose Kuhn '99 named to all-tourney team, Edwards named tourney MVP.
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