Pete Molloy

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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“Can’t wait till tip-off”: Rutgers men poised to finally play Princeton again

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Missing a decade of games is a long time for the Rutgers-Princeton basketball rivalry.

The series began in 1917 and has resulted in 120 games played, many of them memorable.

Separated by only 15 miles and both original colonial colleges, played virtually every year and sometimes twice a year from 1917 until 2013, when new Rutgers basketball coach Eddie Jordan put the games on hiatus.

Jordan was fired in 2016 after only three seasons, and new Rutgers coach Steve Pikiell chose not to play the Tigers. That policy has come to an end.

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