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Princeton University Athletics
Geography Lesson
January 09, 2003 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 9, 2003
When Princeton played in the Cable Car Classic between Christmas and New Year's, it marked a homecoming of sorts for the four Tigers from the state of California. That would be more than 25% of the current roster.
In recent years, Princeton's roster has had a decidedly Californian flair to it. Beginning with the Class of 2000, Princeton has had 32% (six of 19) of its players who have either lettered as seniors or are still on the team come from the Golden State. That trend is set for the near future, as two of the four members of the incoming Class of 2007 are from California.
Of all the trends in Princeton basketball in the last 30 years, perhaps the most interesting and least talked about is not the shot clock, the three-pointer or the up-tempoing of the offense. It's geography.
Princeton's current squad features four Californians, two Texans and one player each from eight other states and the District of Columbia. New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have one player each on the 2002-03 team Contrast that with the 13 members of the 1975-76 team that went 14-0, won the Ivy League, moved into the Top 20 nationally and came within a point of knocking off undefeated and Final Four-bound Rutgers in the first round of the NCAA tournament. That team featured 12 players - 92.3% - from either New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania. The only other state represented was Illinois, home to Bob Slaughter.
"Recruiting is much more national now," says Princeton head coach John Thompson, who came to Princeton from Washington, D.C., in 1984. "We can go to a summer tournament in Las Vegas or Los Angeles and see hundreds of players at once."
Princeton has had 64 players in the last 20 years who are either currently on the team or who lettered as seniors. Of those 64, a total of 33, or slightly more than 50%, were from New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania. It's changed radically in recent years, though.
Since 2000, Princeton has had two players (who fit the criteria of current player/senior letterwinner) from New Jersey (Scott Greenman, Terence Rozier-Byrd), one from New York (Andre Logan) and two from Pennsylvania (Ahmed El-Nokali, Mike Bechtold); those players represent 26% of the roster during that time.
Going back through history, the reliance on the New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania area for players is even more pronounced.
Princeton has had 33 players earn first-team All-Ivy League honors at least once. That group of 33 includes 24 (73%) from the three main states. From the formation of the Ivy League in the mid-'50s until 1989, Princeton had 23 players earn first-team All-Ivy honors at least once. All but three of those (87%) were from the three states. The only exceptions were Bill Bradley from Missouri, John Hummer from Virginia and Craig Robinson from Illinois.
Since 1990, though, Princeton has had 10 players earn first-team All-Ivy honors. Only four of those 10 (Brian Earl, Gabe Lewullis, Steve Goodrich, Chris Mooney) were from New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania.
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Ed Persia, Beaumont, Texas |
Not surprisingly, the group of 24 Tigers who have scored at least 1,000-points includes 18 from New Jersey, New York or Pennsylvania. Illinois has three (Kit Mueller, Craig Robinson, Rick Hielscher), while Virginia (Hummer), Missouri (Bradley) and Maryland (Sydney Johnson) are the others. Looking into the future, Spencer Gloger of California is likely to be the 25th. The current Tiger with the next best chance after Gloger would be Will Venable, also of California.
Princeton has had nine players win Player of the Year in the Ivy League. Prior to 1990, Princeton had four winners; three of whom were from New York (Armond Hill) or New Jersey (Frank Sowinski, Bob Scrabis); the other was Craig Robinson from Illinois. Since then, Princeton has had five players win, and they were from five different states: Kit Mueller, Illinois; Sean Jackson, West Virginia; Sydney Johnson, Maryland; Steve Goodrich, Pennsylvania; Brian Earl, New Jersey.
"Pete [Carril] had a bias towards that New York-Philadelphia-New Jersey Catholic school kid," says Princeton director of athletics Gary Walters, a starter on the 1965 Final Four team and Reading, Pa., native. "He had a lot of those types of players here, especially in the '60s and '70s. The whole recruiting process was different back then. For starters, you didn't have the access to the information on players from the West Coast that you have now. That alone has changed everything."
When did it change? Well, look era by era. The top players in the '50s were probably Bud Haabestad (Pennsylvania), Jim Brangan (Pennsylvania) and Carl Belz (New Jersey). The early '60s featured players like Pete Campbell (New Jersey), Al Kaemmerlen (Pennsylvania) and Art Hyland (Pennsylvania). The big exception, of course, was Bradley, who came from Crystal City outside of St. Louis, but most of the dominant players from the mid-'60s through the mid-'70s and even through most of the '80s were from the three main states. New Jersey, for instance, was the home state of Sowinski, Brian Taylor, Bob Roma, Joe Scott, Bob Scrabis, Ted Manakas, Kevin Mullin, Dave Orlandini and Randy Melville. New York was home to players like Hill, Billy Omeltchenko, Chris Thomforde and Rich Simkus; Pennsylvania was home to Geoff Petrie, Barnes Hauptfuhrer and Joe Heiser.
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Judson Wallace, Atlanta, Ga. |
If you're looking for the one defining moment of change, it might have been when Kit Mueller stepped through a piece of glass in his shower as a high school senior in Downers Grove, Ill. Mueller's subsequent tendon injury chased away every school except Princeton, and Mueller went on to become one of the dominant players in program history.
Mueller was first-team All-Ivy as a sophomore in 1989, when Princeton won the Ivy title for the first time in five years and nearly knocked off Georgetown in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. The Tigers won the league again in 1990, when Mueller (Illinois), Sean Jackson (West Virginia), George Leftwich (Washington, D.C.), Matt Eastwick (Maryland) and Matt Lapin (Washington, D.C.) became the first starting five since the formation of the league (and possibly before; records are a little sketchy in the early days) not to have a player from the three main states.
From there, for every impact player like Chris Mooney (Pennsylvania) and Mike Brennan (New Jersey), there was a Rick Hielscher (Illinois) and Chris Doyal (Texas). The 1998 team, which won a program record 27 games and finished in the Top 10 nationally, was something of a throwback, starting two Pennsylvanians (Goodrich and Lewullis), a Jerseyan (Brian Earl) and New Yorker (James Mastaglio) along with a Hoosier (Mitch Henderson), but the John Thompson teams have been the most geographically diverse yet. His first team won the 2001 Ivy title, and in the NCAA tournament against North Carolina started Andre Logan from New York, Kyle Wente from Illinois, Ed Persia from Texas, Ahmed El-Nokali from Pennsylvania and Nate Walton from California while bringing Mike Bechtold from Pennsylvania, C.J. Chapman from Colorado and Konrad Wysocki from North Carolina (and Europe) off the bench. A year ago, when Princeton won a share of the Ivy title, Princeton had added players from North Carolina, Georgia and California to that mix.
Princeton doesn't figure to go back to the old days of relying on three states for players any time soon. If anything, the trend towards covering the entire map will continue.
"You target players, not areas," says Thompson. "You focus on the players you know."