![]() One key cog in stopping 7’1” Creighton center Ryan Kalkbrenner, the team’s leading scorer who shoots an incredible 71% from the field, is Zach Martini, the 6’7”, 235-lb. “Just get in your f–cking matchup,” he shouts at a teammate. Matt Allocco, the team’s vocal leader who universally known as “Mush”-as in Mush Mouth, someone who’s always talking-raises the intensity. “When we get to Louisville, that place belongs to us,” says Henderson. And on the practice court, Henderson is putting his team through drills designed to limit Creighton’s scoring on fast breaks. None of those schools, however, are playing in the Sweet 16.īut Princeton is. At those schools, basketball teams operate in their own well-resourced bubbles. ![]() It’s difficult to picture a similar stroll into the sacred confines of, say, Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke University or the Dean Dome at North Carolina or Allen Fieldhouse at the University of Kansas. Three days before the Sweet 16, any visitor can walk pretty unbothered to the side of the court where practice is taking place. A handful of students bike past the Jadwin entrance. Members of the women’s soccer team are stretching on a practice field. On this clear afternoon, the walk to Jadwin Gymnasium, the multiuse, spaceship-looking facility off Lake Carnegie in which the Sweet 16-bound Princeton Tigers play their basketball games, feels like business as usual. Tuesday, March 21, 4:15 p.m., Princeton, N.J. It is thanks to this connection that I have had a front-row seat as a reporter embedded with the Tigers, to share the inside story of Princeton basketball’s quest to shake up sports, again, this weekend, and continue its dream run, all the way to Houston and the Final Four. Henderson, however, largely scrapped Carril’s playbook, playing a faster offensive pace, recruiting more physical defenders and rebounders who can bang with some of the biggest teams in the country, and making the program all his own. The Tigers wear bow-tie patches on their jerseys, as a nod to Carril, whose patient, precise offense system-which emphasizes three-pointers and layups-still influences basketball today. Henderson, a former Princeton player whose leap into the air, arms raised, after the Tigers defeated defending champion UCLA back in 1996, became the subject of an iconic photo that defined Cinderella upsets for a generation, is now helping create new lore for the school.Īll season long Henderson, who took over as head coach in 2011, has honored the legacy of his former coach and mentor, Hall of Famer Pete Carril, who died last summer. A Final Four, improbably, is now in reach for Princeton, which hasn’t gotten that far in the NCAA tournament since basketball Hall of Famer Bill Bradley led the Tigers to the men’s national semifinal in 1965.
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