PETE CARRIL: This Coach Stalks Overdogs

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The gnome of Old Nassau is aggrieved. A student named Matthew Eastwick has thrown an errant pass, bouncing a basketball off another student's ankle. Knowing that Eastwick had scored perfect 800s on his College Board entrance tests merely compounds the gravity of this sin in the gnome's considered opinion. He dances past the offender, arms flapping, and plants the lance. "Eastie, Eastie," he rasps, in a voice that is part James Cagney, part Peter Lorre, part Bethlehem, Pa., "didja get someone else to take your College Boards for ya? Didja?" Eastwick stands transfixed, while his tormentor teeters (Could this be?) on the edge of tears. Then Peter J. (Pete) Carril, all 5 ft. 6 1/2 in. of him, winks and permits himself a tiny, sly smile. Eastwick will think twice about attempting that kind of pass again. Carril is sure of that, at least as sure as you can ever be of the intentions of a sophomore.

Carril, 59, knows these things because he has been conducting this particular seminar at Princeton University for 23 years. For lack of a description in the course guide, let's title it Advanced Principles of Human Movement in a Confined and Well-Defended Space. His students call it varsity basketball; his opponents think of it as water torture. No one anywhere teaches the course more skillfully. Says Princeton Dean of Admissions Fred Hargadon: "If we were in Japan, Pete would be designated a Living National Treasure." Instead, Carril may have to settle for merely being the best college basketball coach in America. Year after year, he molds a succession of students whose collective athletic skills would not elicit a raised eyebrow from pro scouts into cohesive units that play a disciplined, cerebral game and regularly confound Top 20 opponents. Yet, until one evening last March when his team nervelessly took top-seeded Georgetown to the limit, losing 50-49, Carril was a household name only in the 609 area code. This week, better known but still wearing the same tatty blue pullover sweater, Carril sends his team into battle again in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. No matter whom the team plays, Princeton will once more be the decided underdog. Take pity on the overdogs.

Not that his fellow coaches need any warning about Carril. After the Georgetown game, John Thompson graciously admitted that he had been outcoached. Jim Boeheim of Syracuse wants to avoid that possibility entirely. + "You never want to play Princeton -- never," he has said. After Princeton scared the bejabbers out of mighty Michigan State, losing earlier this season by two points, Jud Heathcote sang the same tune. "We don't want to play them anymore." Jim Valvano, the coach at North Carolina State, says playing a Carril team is like going to the dentist: very painful. Carril accepts the backhanded compliments as reluctant praise, although he says, "These guys must study one-liners at night."