Princeton’s 1975 NIT Champs Reunite, 50 Years After a Magical March

On a Friday afternoon in late February, the Princeton men’s basketball team detoured to the sideline at the end of its afternoon shootaround to spend a few minutes to shaking hands and talking with the day’s honored guests, members of the Tigers’ 1975 NIT championship team.

The alumni settled into the stands as the women’s team took the floor and started practice. They talked about spouses and grandkids, jobs and retirement. They reminisced about the hours they’d spent on the practice court, passing and cutting as legendary coach Pete Carril shouted instructions, often smoking a cigar.

Nearly the entire team — nine players, two managers, and assistant coach Gary Walters ’67 — returned for a reunion on Alumni Day, 50 years after their magical tournament run at Madison Square Garden. (Carril died in 2022, and two team members living in Southern California were unable to make the trip back to campus.)

Seeing the turnout, team member Tim van Blommesteyn ’75 tells PAW, was a reminder that the group has been “blessed, in many ways.”

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Armond Hill ’85

1976 Bric-a-Brac

Midway through the 1974-75 season, though, the idea that these Tigers would rank among Princeton’s greatest teams, with a banner of its own at Jadwin Gym, might have seemed farfetched.

In January 1975, Princeton split its two games with Penn, winning at home but losing at the Palestra. After dropping a second Ivy League game to Brown, by one point, the Tigers slid to second place, and Carril told The Daily Princetonian, “I just don’t see anyone beating Penn.” If the Quakers won the league and its NCAA Tournament bid, Princeton’s best hope would be an invite to the 16-team NIT. (The NCAA field expanded that year but still only had 32 teams.)

The Tigers rattled off six straight wins and then traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia, for a rare Tuesday night nonconference game against Virginia — a chance to bolster their postseason credentials. That prospect seemed to dim when Carril was ejected for arguing with the referees five minutes into the second half. Walters, the lone assistant, hadn’t made the trip, so on his way out of the gym, Carril directed Peter Molloy ’76 to take over as coach.

The backup guard managed to guide the Tigers to a 55-50 win, though Molloy says the stories of his role as “coach” are vastly overstated. Still, beating an ACC team on the road meant something. “That was our ticket to the NIT,” van Blommesteyn says.

Penn won the league (as Carril predicted) and was quickly dispatched by Kansas State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Princeton drew Holy Cross in the first round of the NIT.

In the week before the game, the NCAA Wrestling Championships took over Jadwin, so men’s basketball moved to Dillon Gym — once Bill Bradley ’65’s home court and, in 1975, the realm of undergraduate pickup games.

“We were bumping out all of the people I used to play with,” says Mike Conneran ’76, one of the team’s managers.

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Mickey Steuerer ’76 

Gail Allen / PAW

Carril called on his freshman team to challenge the varsity, giving them a 6-on-5 advantage in practice. Forward Barnes Hauptfuhrer ’76 says Frank Sowinski ’78 and the frosh ran them out of the gym. While it might have been dispiriting in the moment, the preparation paid off: Princeton dominated Holy Cross, 84-63, and Carril brought the whole squad with him to the press conference to illustrate that it was a team victory.

Princeton’s reward for that first-round win was a matchup with South Carolina, which featured future NBA stars Alex English and Mike Dunleavy. The Gamecocks had pummeled the Tigers 66-48 in a December nonconference game. From the jump, the rematch looked very different as Princeton’s offense took control, sprinting to a 21-10 lead. “We were executing flawlessly,” says former guard Brien O’Neill ’75.

Point guard Armond Hill ’85 picked apart the defense in a performance that van Blommesteyn says was the most fun he’s ever had watching a person play basketball. While Hill could score as well as anyone, he often sacrificed his own shots to get the whole team involved in the offense. Against the Gamecocks, though, he took on every defender they put on him. “They couldn’t find anybody to hold him down,” van Blommesteyn says.

Hill scored 18 points in the first half, finished the game with 22, and Princeton won 86-67.

As the Tigers’ tournament run continued, the caravan to New York City grew. “The trains to and from the city were choked with students and townspeople, ebulliently disputing the impossibility of it all,” Dan White ’65 wrote in PAW. “Andy’s Tavern on Alexander Road in Princeton — owned by the avuncular Joe Fasanella, a close friend of head coach Pete Carril —contributed a busload of its clientele to the crowd at the Garden.”

Princeton’s next opponent, Oregon, featured the dynamic guard Ron Lee, who would ultimately be named the tournament MVP (for the third-place team). Carril put all-around star Mickey Steuerer ’76 on Lee in hopes of slowing him down, and the Tigers controlled the pace of the game. Hill sank two late free throws and blocked a shot to preserve Princeton’s 58-57 win.

That set up a championship showdown with Providence, and by then, the Tigers’ confidence was soaring. “It never even crossed my mind that we’d lose that game,” Hauptfuhrer says.

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Steuerer paced an early burst that put Princeton ahead by 11, but the Friars closed the gap to one before halftime. After the break, Steuerer took control again, scoring six of his game-high 26 in the opening minutes. The Tigers pulled away, winning 80-69.

Playing in an era with no shot clock and no 3-point line, Princeton reached the 80-point mark three times in four NIT games, a testament to what Carril’s offense could do against often bigger, stronger opponents.  “It was continuous motion,” says forward Mark Hartley ’77. “Everybody learned to play every position. But it was never a slow-down [offense].”

For most of the NIT team, there were more championship moments to come: Princeton surpassed Penn and won consecutive Ivy League titles in 1975-76 and 1976-77. But for van Blommesteyn and O’Neill, the win over Providence was their final collegiate game. They celebrated together, hoisting the trophy and posing for a photo that would appear on PAW’s April 15, 1975, cover.