RIP Pete Carril, last of the genius basketball curmudgeons

I should have ignored the rules and taped the conversation. A lunch put together by the late, great Jim O’Connell from the Associated Press and the still-great Ray Cella, once the Atlantic 10’s PR guru, somewhere in mid-Jersey. The menu, basic giant deli sandwich fare. The lasting memory: Pete Carril and John Chaney, both retired, sitting next to each other, suddenly debating whether you should put a man on the inbounds passer with your full-court press.

Time stood still. The beauty of the conversation wasn’t about who got what right or wrong, but more for the respect each man showed for the debate itself as they semi-heatedly argued their points. Two retired legends, last of the genius curmudgeons.

“The only reason Phil Jackson did it, Red Holzman made him to do it,” Cella remembers Chaney saying.

Carril scoffed, giving no ground. They were a matched set. Pete Carril died Monday, at age 92. How much respect did Chaney have for Carril? He wouldn’t play him. No upside in that, even for the coach who would have played anyone anywhere, although Carril always tried to get a game.

A recapping of Carril’s career could start with one of two games, a win or a loss, both in the NCAA Tournament. A win over UCLA in 1996, a loss to Georgetown in 1989. Each could have gone the other way. Each belongs in the history of March Madness itself.

If you thought Carril’s fabled back-cutting Princeton Offense was just a college gimmick, Carril himself proved that all wrong when he went to the Sacramento Kings as an assistant. Look at that … those cuts still worked. The then-New Jersey Nets used a version for some terrific playoff teams. It all worked.

“He hated the term ‘Princeton Offense,’‘’ said Jerry Price, Carril’s last sports information director. “He said, ‘I took that from the Boston Celtics and Red Auerbach.’”

To sit on press row at the Palestra right next to the visiting bench … Heaven, as you picked up interesting vocabulary, Carril muttering his own commentary about what he was seeing on the court.

“I did this thing about the 20 greatest quotes from Coach Carril,’’ said Price, now the Princeton athletic department’s official historian. “I said I could include five times as many that I couldn’t print.”

Longtime sportswriter Brad Wilson spent two years as a Carril manager. He remembers a loss at Jadwin to Penn on what the Princeton contingent certainly considered an outrageous call.

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“Pete was apoplectic,” Wilson wrote in an email. “He was still hot when he got back to Caldwell Field House, where all the postgame was. Looking for clubhouse manager Hank Towns, crying out, ‘I need a beer,’ he walked right by the outstretched hand of Princeton president William G. Bowen without the slightest acknowledgment. Having secured a cold one, he lit up a cigar and sat on the bench outside the locker room to talk to the crowd of reporters, and he looked haggard.”

Wilson remembers it like it was yesterday: “A kid from the Daily Pennsylvanian asks Carril a long -ish ‘Coach, if …' question. Carril takes a long draw on the cigar, downs a deep draft of beer, puts the beer down, and says, ‘Yeah, and if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its ass on the rocks when it jumps.’”

“I don’t think he ever went into a game believing he couldn’t win, including that Georgetown game,” said Price, who also said, “I would call him the most interesting person I ever met. He blended sociology and basketball together. It was like, every time he spoke, you learned something new. He had such a gift for people, who they were. For being a no-BS guy.”

On the road, Price said, Carril would find a bookstore or record store, spend endless time browsing. He could talk history, politics, philosophy, other sports.

“I don’t think he ever said hello without caring about the answer,” Price said. “He made endless fun of me for going to Penn. When he first met me, he asked where I went to college. I told him. The first thing he said, ‘What were your SAT scores?’ When I told him, he said, ‘Oh, you can get two into Penn for that.’”

Sure, he could be intimidating, even for the biggest guys on his team.

“He came from nothing,” Price said. “His father worked for 40 years in the steel mills in Bethlehem. He talked about the oddity of someone from his background coaching at Princeton.”

You think of Princeton, there may have been Nobel winners stocking most departments, but for outsiders of a certain generation, you might think of a pair, Carril and writer/writing professor John McPhee. Price called McPhee Monday to tell him the news.

“John played tennis with Pete for many years,” Price said. “He said he could tell he was playing well when Pete had to put his cigar down.”

“An amazing coach,” said Fran Dunphy, now La Salle’s coach, who won and lost his share of their Penn-Princeton epic battles. “One of the most copied coaches of all time. At every level. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Pete was a most flattered human being.”

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Carril last coached Princeton in 1996, bowing out after 29 seasons, and, as Price pointed out, his successors to this day all either coached under him or played under him.

Nobody ever forgot a Carril encounter. Wilson goes back to October 1981. “It was ‘training lecture’ day for the team. The team is sitting on its bench at Jadwin, and Carril starts the training lecture. First, he points to his [ubiquitous] cigar and says, ‘Like I am going to tell you not to smoke?’ Second, he said his best team [at that time … 1975 NIT champ] was the hardest-drinking and partying team he ever had. ‘So.’ The freshmen [including me] are looking shocked with our jaws dropping. Third, drugs. ‘I don‘t recommend them. But I’ll say this: You get caught with drugs, don’t call me to get you out.’

“By this point, general amazement. He finished up, ‘Look, I don’t care what you do across the road [his term for the rest of the university, as Jadwin was on the east side of Washington Road]. But when you come here, be ready to play.’”

That lunch … Bill Raftery showed up. Lou Carnesecca was undergoing cancer treatment, but he checked in by speaker phone. A few scribes tagged along from Philly and New York. Everyone made sure Chaney and Carril sat next to each other in the middle.

Put a man on the inbounds passer? Carril mentioned Grant Hill’s fabled 1992 NCAA pass to Christian Laettner. Carril’s exact words, lost to time.

“That was the provision,” Cella said. “No cameras, no tape recorders.”

For the record, Carril won the debate. He’d come ready to play.