.png&width=24&type=webp)
Princeton University Athletics
Princeton 43, UCLA 41 ... 10 Years Later
March 15, 2006 | Men's Basketball
March 15, 2006
He was funny, all right. He'd come out with clever quips like "I'll take that up with God when I get there" or "Nature is indifferent to the plight of man" and another chapter in the curmudgeonly career of Pete Carril would be written.
Close, and another cigar.
It all changed for him on a warm March night in, of all places, Indianapolis. It was on that night that 31,569 people, enough to fill Jadwin Gym more than four times over, filed into the RCA Dome and watched history.
March 14, 1996. 10 years ago, already.
Princeton 43, UCLA 41. Gabe Lewullis, then a freshman and now an orthopedic surgery resident, scored a backdoor layup on a feed from Steve Goodrich with 3.9 seconds remaining.
"I worked at CBS for a long time, covered hundreds and hundreds of events," says Andrea Joyce, who was the sideline reporter for the network in the Dome that night. "The Princeton-UCLA game was without a doubt the highlight."
It's hard to narrow down more than a full century of basketball and select one game that stands above. Princeton has won 35 league championships, one every three years, and every one of those teams had its crowning moment. There have been 23 NCAA tournament appearances, including a Final Four appearance in 1965. There were some classic near-misses, most notably the 1989 NCAA tournament loss to Georgetown. There were great regular season games, including a 1964 Holiday Festival loss to Michigan and the 1999 game at Penn, when the Tigers rallied from 27 down in the final 15 minutes to win.
Still, Princeton basketball history is really about two men, Bill Bradley and Pete Carril. Bradley is the consummate Princetonian, a player who set records that have no chance of ever being broken, who won a Rhodes Scholarship, who was destined for unlimited greatness even as an undergrad. His legacy was set by the almost mythic proportions of his achievements.
Carril was different. If Bradley remains the standard of Princeton basketball, then Carril is the conscience. Carril was no child of privilege, and his greatest irony is that he was so completely mismatched for the University that he spent 29 years trying to understand. His legacy changed in the last of all of those weeks, when he was finally rewarded for his faith, for his unwavering belief that Princeton players were just basketball players, not Ivy League basketball players, and that they could in fact beat anyone. It is that vindication that pushes the Princeton-UCLA game to the top and makes that fascinating stretch in March 1996 the greatest week in the history of the program.
"I'm just glad," says Georgetown assistant basketball coach Sydney Johnson, who more than any other player was responsible for what went on, "that I was a part of something that seems so special to so many people. That's no small thing."
Now, 10 years later, it's easy to forget some realities. Princeton did not play the perfect game against UCLA, far from it. The Tigers shot 37% from the field for the game and were just 8 for 27 from three-point range and 1 for 5 from the foul line. They were outrebounded by 10. They were just inches away from being finished off with six minutes to go before Charles O'Bannon missed a breakaway layup.
More than that, they were just inches from never getting to Indianapolis in the first place. The Saturday night before, Princeton and Penn met in a one-game playoff to determine the Ivy's representative to the NCAA tournament, and that night almost turned into the most crushing defeat in Tiger history.
"The UCLA game meant more to Princeton University, the alumni, Coach Carril and the nation in some respect than it did to the players," says Johnson. "If you ask the guys on the team, I think they'd say that the playoff game against Penn to get to the tournament meant much more to us."
Princeton led Penn by as many as 13 in the game played at Lehigh's Stabler Arena, in Carril's hometown of Bethlehem. The Quakers, though, came all the way back, and a defensive lapse gave Ira Bowman a wide-open three-pointer to tie it with 10 seconds to play and force overtime. Penn took its first lead of the game in OT, but Johnson bailed the Tigers out with a three-pointer from the corner, a steal and two foul shots in the final minute for a 63-56 win. And then, the bombshell was dropped, first in the locker room and then in the media room. Pete Carril announced his retirement, effective after the NCAA tournament. This was the backdrop under which Princeton left for Indiana.
"Our team had never beaten anyone of that stature," says Johnson. "Back then, Princeton was known for coming close. Although we didn't think we were going to win, we knew we had a chance with the game plan that was put together and the fact that we had nothing to lose."
UCLA was the defending champ and the most storied team in the history of the tournament. The Bruins might have been distracted by the fact that Arizona, and not the Bruins, was rewarded with a spot in the West Regional, but you couldn't tell it by the way the game started as the final game of four that day. A three-pointer, a follow dunk and another dunk made it 7-0 Bruins at the first TV timeout. It looked like this night, unlike those other nights from 1989-92 when the Tigers lost four NCAA games by a total of 15 points, might be a long one.
But then Chris Doyal and Lewullis hit three-pointers, and Princeton was within 7-6. It was 19-18 at intermission, and UCLA stayed in the locker room until just before the second half began.
The crowd took most of those first 20 minutes to figure out what was going on. There were few actual Princeton fans in the building; most were either locals or fans of Mississippi State or Virginia Commonwealth or Duke or any of the other teams that had played earlier in the day.
"For most of the first half, the crowd just sat there watching the game," Johnson says. "In the second half, they started jumping to our side. As we made a game of it, they started to realize just how big an upset the might be watching. They place was so loud, and I think the noise started to take some of the spirit out of UCLA."
Neither team led by more than three points for the first 10 minutes of the second half, and it was a 31-31 game with 10:35 to play. It was at that point that UCLA seemed to be ready to finally pull away, and the Bruins built a lead of 41-34 over the next four minutes. Princeton then turned the ball over and Toby Bailey, the MVP of the Final Four a year earlier, threw a three-quarter court pass to Ed O'Bannon, who was ahead of the field. Had O'Bannon converted, the lead would have been nine and the Tigers might have been finished. Instead, O'Bannon caught the ball slightly closer to the basket than he thought and missed his layup. Princeton had another chance.
"That was the last game of the day," says Joyce. "It was late. Everyone was tired. It was time to go home. And then all of the sudden, it was like 'hey, look at this.' All of the sudden, everyone was scrambling. It felt like we were in a movie."
Instead of falling behind by nine, Princeton had a new life. Johnson, who missed his first four three-pointers and then made his final three, connected from about 25 feet to cut it to four. Doyal then penetrated and found Goodrich, whose reverse layup just beat the shot clock to make it 41-39. Doyal then stole the ball and got it to Mitch Henderson, who got it to Johnson for the layup that tied it at 41-41 with 2:58 to go.
There was bedlam in the Dome.
The teams then traded chances, and UCLA missed out on the biggest when Johnson was called for an intentional foul on Cameron Dollar with 1:02 to play. Dollar, though, missed both foul shots, and the noise level increased, if that was possible. UCLA still had the ball, but Kris Johnson missed his runner in the lane, and Goodrich pulled in the rebound. Timeout Princeton, 21 seconds to play.
Johnson took the ball off the inbounds and got it to Goodrich in the high post with 10 seconds left. Lewullis, meanwhile, cut from the wing to the basket, went back to the wing in a move that took O'Bannon with him and then doubled back to take the perfect feed.
"Earlier in the game," Lewullis says, "I had gone backdoor on O'Bannon and he played it really well. This time, I went out to the three-point line, and he came with me. I cut, like we always do, and Steve found me with a great pass. All I had to do was make the layup."
The clock stopped with 3.9 seconds left. UCLA then inbounded the ball and called timeout with 1.7 seconds on the clock. The game was then delayed for more than seven minutes while the officials decided to put 2.2 seconds on the clock and award UCLA the ball in the frontcourt. UCLA and Princeton then called separate timeouts, increasing the tension and leaving the crowd to wonder if this might not end up as the cruelest night for Princeton of them all.
"I just remember kneeling there the whole time, waiting for the game to start again and then getting ready to grab Coach for an interview," says Joyce. "The whole time, I remember having the sensation that this wasn't really happening."
Bailey took the inbounds pass with Johnson on him, made one move and put up an airball as the horn sounded. Princeton, and Pete Carril, had won.
"A lot of times in this day and age, athletes, particularly young athletes, are afraid to show emotion," says Joyce. "I was so struck by this group of guys who were so genuinely excited by what they had done and weren't afraid to show it. They were just so thrilled by the moment."
It ended two days later, of course, as Mississippi State stopped the Tigers 63-41. That game was forgotten almost as soon as it was over. The UCLA game will live forever. It was more than just a win, after all. It was the crowning achievement of a career, one that helped vault Carril into the hall of fame two years later.
"I guess," Carril told Joyce on the court, moments after it happened, "that I won't have to be known as the guy who lost every close one."
No, he won't. The conscience of Princeton basketball won this one, in the grandest style, in the most emotional manner.
In some ways, it's hard to believe 10 years have come and gone. Carril is still with the Sacramento Kings as an assistant coach. Princeton has had three head coaches since, all three of whom have taken either Princeton, another school, or both to the NCAA tournament in their own right. Princeton itself has won six Ivy League championships and been back to the NCAA tournament four times since the UCLA game. There have also been two trips to the NIT.
No NCAA tournament has come and gone since without the clip of Goodrich's pass and the Lewullis layup being on prominent display on CBS. Tom McCarthy's radio call from WHWH has probably been heard by more people on ESPN Classic than listened to it live.
Lewullis, who went on to become the ninth all-time leading scorer in school history with 1,277 career points and third among three-point shooters in school history, didn't need to play again after the UCLA game to earn legend status at Princeton. The legend continues to grow, as Lewullis has been interviewed about the play every single year since by one outlet or another across the country, including most recently the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The classic picture of Mitch Henderson, fists clenched, caught in full leap after Bailey's missed shot, has become perhaps the single most famous image in Princeton athletic history.
That night in Indianapolis remains cemented in the memories of those who were there. It was a night of validation, a night of triumph, a night when there was no bigger story anywhere than Princeton basketball.
It wasn't a perfect game for the Tigers, just a perfect night.
Princeton 43, UCLA 41.
It's still perfect, 10 years later. It's never going to be any different.