Jim From Jersey

Princeton men’s basketball’s 1975 NIT title run remembered 50 years later

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The 1975 NIT program, found in the author’s attic.

March 23 marked the 50th anniversary of an extraordinary moment in Ivy League basketball history, when Princeton University’s cagers shocked the college basketball world by winning the 1975 National Invitational Tournament. I fell in love with Princeton basketball that season as a 10-year old kid growing up in Princeton, N.J.

Armond Hill, Mickey Steurer, Barnes Hauptfuhrer, Tim “Speedy” van Blommesteyn, Peter “Mugsy” Molloy, Brian O’Neill, Ilan “Spider” Ramati — these Tigers were regular topics of dinner conversation in my house that year. I collected all of these heroes’ autographs on game programs marked with the players’ sweat.

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Learning to love the “new” Princeton Tigers

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I didn’t like this Princeton basketball team at first. In fact, I found it infuriating. At the start of the season, these Tigers seemed to affirm my fears that the classic “Princeton System” was dead at Old Nassau.

Growing up less than two miles from Jadwin Gym, I was raised on the pure form of Princeton Basketball. My parents took me to see the Tigers win the NIT at the Garden when I was 10 and I was hooked for life. My Dad taught me to watch the players without the ball and to observe the players’ feet, not their hands. A good pass is not just one that reaches the open man, because the player needs to land the ball in a teammate’s hands in perfect position to shoot.

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Craving Madness, if not the Ivy kind

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It’s back. That deliciously dizzy feeling that madness is coming. As a rabid Princeton basketball fan of a certain age, I got used to this feeling years ago when the Tigers charged into the NCAA Tournament with regularity. Twice in the late ‘70s, four times in the ‘80s, six times in the ‘90s, and twice in the early 2000s, the orange and black danced “bigly,” as a certain Penn graduate might say.

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Enough already with the ‘new Ivy League’ narrative

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The Yale Bulldogs’ terrific showing in this year’s NCAA Tournament has inspired a new national narrative. As a Wall Street Journal headline put it, “The Ivy League finally merits your respect.”

But as someone who has been following Ivy League basketball for more than forty years, the story that’s being promoted in certain circles is revisionist history that just makes me want to scream.

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