Dec. 30, 2008

EASTON, Pa. - The Princeton University Department of Athletics will name the game floor at Jadwin Gymnasium "Carril Court" in honor of Hall-of-Fame coach Pete Carril '52 who won 514 games and 13 Ivy League championships in 29 years at Princeton. An official ceremony will be held Feb. 21 when Princeton hosts Dartmouth.

Carril coached Princeton from the 1967-68 season until the 1995-96 season, compiling a record of 514-263. He took Princeton to 11 NCAA tournaments and two NITs, winning the NIT championship in 1975. His final team at Princeton defeated Penn in a one-game playoff for the Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. That same squad knocked off defending national champion UCLA, 43-41, in the first round, scoring the winning basket with 3.9 seconds to play on a signature backdoor play.

Carril grew up in Bethlehem, Pa., where his father worked in the steel mills for 40 years. He turned to basketball at an early age, and he played at Lafayette College under legendary coach Butch van Breda Kolff. Carril would go to the Army and then to coaching at Easton High and Reading High in Pennsylvania before becoming the head coach at Lehigh, where he was 11-12 in 1966-67. When van Breda Kolff left Princeton to become the Los Angeles Lakers' head coach, Carril replaced him on the Tigers' bench.

He also helped teach a brand of basketball that became known as the "Princeton Offense" and eventually spread to all levels of professional, college and high school basketball. His coaching legacy includes five current Division I head coaches who played for him at Princeton.

He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1998 and Lafayette's Maroon Club Hall of Fame in 1980.