Sydney Johnson

Mitch Henderson finds the perfect pitch for Princeton

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In his sixth season as Princeton’s head coach, Mitch Henderson led the Tigers to the Ivy League’s first undefeated regular season since 2007-08. (Ivy League Digital Network)

For Mitch Henderson, the climb to the top of the Ivy League mountain has been anything but easy.

Critics point out his teams’ surprising inability to close the sale in some past seasons and his struggles with Harvard and Yale as indications of something missing in his program. Supporters point out he is young, smart and has brought a vision for the long haul.  He has developed a new culture and identity for Tiger basketball that bears his unmistakable imprint.

The Tigers’ 14-0 march through the 2016-17 Ivy schedule, making Henderson the odds-on favorite for Coach of the Year honors, tips the scales in favor of the supporters’ case.

Let’s take a closer look at what Henderson has done, particularly over the last three seasons as he put the building blocks of the current juggernaut in place.

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Brian Earl: The right coach at the right time for Cornell

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Princeton finished in the top three in the Ivy League eight straight seasons with Brian Earl as an assistant coach. The Tigers were the only Ivy team to do so in that span. (College Chalk Talk)

In 2010, Cornell Athletic Director Andy Noel took two weeks to hire Virginia Tech assistant coach Bill Courtney as the replacement for the enormously successful Steve Donahue. Following the Big Red’s run to the Sweet Sixteen and Donahue’s jump to Boston College, Noel selected the former Bucknell All-Patriot League player from a final group that included Wisconsin assistant coach Gary Close and then-Temple assistant and
present Colgate head coach Matt Langel.

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Ivy 60 for 60: Brian Earl

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Brian Earl ranked in the top three in the Ivy League in offensive win shares in all four of his seasons at Princeton and ranks first in total win shares among all Ivy players dating back to the 1993-94 season. Win Shares is a player statistic designed to assign credit for team success to the individuals on the team. (goprincetontigers.com)

Following our countdown of the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s men’s basketball history this summer, Ivy Hoops Online is delighted to continue celebrating the 60th anniversary of modern Ivy League basketball by honoring the top 60 players in Ivy hoops history (in no particular order). For the next entry in our Ivy 60 for 60 series, we cover one of the greatest players in Princeton basketball history and the Big Red’s new head honcho:

Brian Earl, one of the Princeton Tigers’ best and best-loved players, is the new head coach at Cornell. It is his first head coaching job.

A gifted player, Earl was a member of three Ivy championship teams, including Pete Carril’s final season as head coach in 1995-96. Over the next two seasons, the Tigers went 51-6 overall and 28-0 in the Ivy League. Earl’s 1,428 career points rank seventh in Tiger history. He graduated as the league’s career leader in three-point field goals. A product of Medford Lakes, N.J., Earl started 113 games for the Tigers, a school record. He was named Ivy League Player of the Year in his senior year.

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Cornell hires Princeton assistant Brian Earl to be Big Red’s next head coach

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Brian Earl takes over as the 22nd head coach in Cornell men’s basketball history. (ivyleaguedigitalnetwork.com)

Cornell Athletics announced Monday that it has hired Princeton assistant coach Brian Earl to be its next head coach, replacing Bill Courtney, who was fired last month, in the position.

Earl became associate head coach in 2015 and had been an assistant under two head coaches for the past nine seasons at Princeton, which he graduated from in 1999. According to Princeton Athletics, Earl’s Ivy League peers voted him as the league’s top assistant coach in a November 2010 FoxSports.com poll, and Earl served another five years as assistant under Mitch Henderson, who was promoted to head coach following Princeton’s 2010-11 Ivy League Championship under then-head coach Sydney Johnson.

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Jim Engles stresses continuity in his introduction as Columbia’s new head coach

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Photo from byianwenik
Columbia Athletic Director Peter Pilling (left) and Jim Engles share responsibility for the future of Columbia basketball now, in addition to an actual basketball. (Ian Wenik)

NEW YORK — Jim Engles is a unicorn amongst college coaches.

He’s not much of a screamer during games.

He’s never too up or too down in press conferences (just watch the presser after the biggest win of his career, NJIT’s 72-70 win over Michigan in 2014, for proof).

Rarest of all, Engles has never had to move out of the tri-state area during his career, enabling his children to grow up in one home.

That kind of stability is what the Columbia basketball program desperately needs as it enters a period of tremendous transition. Maodo Lo, Alex Rosenberg, Grant Mullins and Isaac Cohen will all be gone, which means that Engles will be forced to replace roughly half of the team’s regular rotation (and its best player) right out of the gate. Oh, and there’s that newfangled conference tournament thing starting next year, too.

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Ivy post-Thanksgiving (just Columbia, unfortunately) roundup

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Fairfield 82, Columbia 81 (OT)

Two threes from senior guard Grant Mullins in the final 2:19 allowed the Lions to force overtime, but to no avail. Threes ruled all night for the Lions, with 41 of their 69 field goal attempts coming from beyond the arc against Fairfield’s zone. They can shoot 1,000 threes and it won’t matter if their defense doesn’t improve. Columbia fouls resulted in 8-for-8 free throw shooting from the Stags in the second half, and former Princeton coach Sydney Johnson’s crew shot 46.7 percent for the game, 9.6 percent greater than the Lions. Now let’s just skip to the real defensive meltdown:

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Princeton all-time moment No. 1: Carril goes out a hero

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. We started with Princeton because, hey, it”s Princeton.

The 1995-96 season was Pete Carril’s 29th at the helm of the Tigers. At 65 years of age, he was slowing down, inevitably, and he knew it. His last great run had ended in 1992 with a fourth straight Ivy title, the only time one class achieved such a streak. Since then his teams were Ivy also-rans, failing to defeat archrival Penn even once in the last three years. His top assistant, Bill Carmody, was entering his 14th year on the bench. Carmody clearly aspired to run his own show. Retirement rumors would swirl around Carril all season.

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Princeton all-time moment No. 3: Pete Carril to the Hall of Fame

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. We’re starting with Princeton because that’s where T.S. Eliot is from. “In the room the women come and go/Talking of Michael Bechtold…”

Princeton University was most fortunate that Peter J. Carril, a high school basketball star

from Bethlehem, Pa., decided to play for Lafayette and coach Butch van Breda Kolff. A decade and a half later, when VBK succumbed to the lure of Hollywood’s bright lights, his diminutive protégé was installed as his successor after only one season of college coaching at Lehigh in his hometown.

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Princeton all-time moment No. 4: 1997-98 Ivy champions

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. We’re starting with Princeton because that’s where Joseph Stalin’s daughter defected to. In Soviet Russia as in the United States, Princeton offense runs you!

Bill Carmody, an honorary member of the Class of 1975, joined Pete Carril’s staff in 1982. He spent the next 14 productive and mostly glorious seasons watching and learning. When Carril decided to retire after winning his final Ivy title on a heart-stopping three pointer by Sydney Johnson in a playoff against Penn (who else?), he made it known that no one was better qualified to succeed him than Bill Carmody.

Bill’s all too-brief four year tenure as head coach was among the most dominant periods ever in the long history of Tiger hoops. His overall record was 92-25. In the Ivy League he was 50-6, including a remarkable 28-0 in 1996-97 and 1997-98.

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Princeton all-time moment No. 8: The last hurrah

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. We’re starting with Princeton because that’s where House was set.

By the 2010-11 season, the Ivy League landscape had undergone a radical transformation, the extent of which could be anticipated if not clearly perceived. One thing was clear: The historical domination by Penn and Princeton, which had extended well into the previous decade, was no longer. Cornell, coached by Steve Donahue and led by the remarkable Ryan Wittman, won three straight titles, capped by a stirring run to the Sweet Sixteen, and thereby moved the axis of power northward. Tommy Amaker, a power conference wolf in the Ivy League henhouse, threatened to move it even further.

A product of the ultimate big-time program as a player, and after some stops along the coaching trail at Michigan and Seton Hall, Amaker arrived in Cambridge with his controversy-laden baggage. He was hired to do one thing: WIN CHAMPIONSHIPS. Supported by his administration and a booster organization with unlimited resources and the willingness to deploy them, Amaker set about to install a machine that would set the league pace for years to come. By 2010, Amaker’s recruiting methods were producing skilled players in numbers unprecedented in Cambridge. Could anyone stop the inevitable?

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