By Mike Leflar
Lafayette Athletic Communications
The NBA's Sacramento Kings recently announced that assistant coach Pete Carril '52 would assume the newly created role of Special Assistant to the President of Basketball Operations. At 71 years of age, Carril remains an integral part of the basketball success of the Kings organization. Wherever Carril's career has taken him, success has followed closely behind.
He joined the struggling Kings just before the 1996-97 season as an assistant coach. In 1998-99, with Carril firmly aboard the Sacramento staff, the Kings enjoyed their first winning season since 1982-83, and the franchise has not looked back. Their 61 wins this past NBA season led the league, and the Kings' youth and chemistry should ensure their position among the league's elite for years to come.
After watching the Kings battle the eventual World Champion Lakers for seven games in this year's Western Conference Finals it was easy to see Carril's influence on the team. The Kings have become arguably the most unselfish team in the league, and the dynamic passing they display is vintage Carril. While Carril has taken his passion and knowledge for the game into the NBA, the seeds of Carril's basketball philosophy, that the game's purists swear by, were planted on College Hill over 50 years ago. "What I introduced to our team was a philosophy which I learned from my old coach, Wilhem (Butch) van Bread Kolff. That is, move the ball around, take the tension out of the game by passing the ball," Carril said.
One look at Coach Carril on the bench over the past 30 years and it is easy to see the experiences from Lafayette remain with him. He wears his emotions on his sleeve, just as his volatile head coach van Breda Kolff did so many years before on the hardwood at Lafayette. "I am totally indebted to him for every experience and every sense of the game as he was the most important influence of my life."
The legendary van Breda Kolff knew Carril's affection and genius for the game when he first stepped in as the Leopards' new head coach in 1951, Carril's senior season. The rookie coach entrusted Carril with the captaincy, and Carril's on-court leadership was born.
After playing for van Breda Kolff for one year on College Hill, Carril took up coaching on the high school level at Easton High School. "My most important goals early in my life were to coach at my old high school in Bethlehem, Liberty, or at Lafayette," Carril noted. He spent 13 seasons coaching the high school ranks at Easton and Reading high schools, accumulating an impressive 145-42 record.
He debuted in the collegiate ranks at Lehigh, turning the program around in just one season. Carril led Lehigh to a respectable 11-12 record in 1966 after the team posted a 4-17 mark the year before. Also, Lehigh's 45-43 upset over N.I.T. bound Rutgers was an early indication of Carril's knack for the dramatic.
After only one season at Lehigh, Carril was slated for the prestigious Princeton head-coaching job. On the strong recommendation of then departing Princeton coach "Butch" van Breda Kolff, his former coach, Carril beat out a list of candidates that included a young Bobby Knight, and future NBA Hall of Fame coach Dr. Jack Ramsay.
It was at Princeton where Carril thrived and gained coaching celebrity. In his 29 seasons at Princeton, Carril compiled a 514-261 mark, for an incredible .663 winning percentage. Princeton won 13 Ivy League titles, made 11 NCAA appearances, and Carril's teams' suffered through just one losing season (11-15, 1984-85).
Most notably, at Princeton, Pete Carril's offense was always more science than system and he was the genius who perfected the formula that took his teams from virtual anonymity to the topic of conversation in basketball circles. The backdoor cut was not created by an artist's brush stroke, but by a man's calculated formula.
Never more did that formula equate to perfection than in the first weekend of March Madness. In 1989, as a 16 seed, Carril's Princeton team balanced his intricate formula, scoring 48 points on 24 baskets accompanied by 24 assists, against No. 1 Georgetown. Unfortunately for Princeton and Carril, the Hoyas tallied 49, but never before or since has a 16 seed come that close to upsetting a one seed in March.
While tournament immortality eluded Carril and the Tigers in 1989, their 43-41 upset victory over No. 2 seed and defending National Champion UCLA in the 1996 NCAA Tournament forever solidified their place in history. With 3.6 seconds remaining in a tied game, Carril watched the Tigers orchestrate the perfect back door cut, off of the perfect pass, and score his 525th and last victory. It was a victory that Carril said brought him "unparalleled happiness."
Carril instilled in Princeton an unwillingness to be average on the court, and that is something that coaches at schools in the Ivy, Patriot, and other small conferences teach everyday. Carril taught his teams what he called, "a sense for how to play against teams that were more talented than you were, and still win." He got his players to believe, and because of that, come March, we do not remember one Princeton player or team from past glory, but we remember what Cinderella is capable of, and we nurture the hope and thought that the slipper will fit.
After Princeton's dramatic 1996 campaign, Carril retired from the collegiate ranks after 30 years as a head coach. He finished his career as the winningest coach in Ivy League history (525-273, .658 winning percentage). Carril was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on September 29, 1997.
Today, as he enters a new role in Sacramento, Carril will continue to scout and offer on-court advice, but he will do far less traveling with the team. He will have more time to enjoy with his children, Peter and Lisa, and his two grandchildren, and more time to enjoy the long walks he dearly loves, reflecting on all those memories.
