Smart Take from the Strong: The Basketball Philosophy of Pete Carril

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The class and success of Princeton University's basketball program can be traced to two words: Pete Carril. Carril coached the perennial Ivy League powerhouse for 29 seasons before his 1996 retirement, and his hardwood hard line couldn't have been simpler: play smart. Of course, it helped that his players were smart enough--they did get into Princeton--to compensate for any lack of size and talent. Carril preached winning through intelligence, selfless play, and dogged defense. The Smart Take from the Strong is his bible. While it makes a pass here and there at biography, the book's beauty is the keenness of its Carrilion collection of on- and off-the-court parables and beatitudes. How can you turn a deaf ear to eternal verities such as "Bad shooters are always open" and "The ability to rebound is in inverse proportion to the distance your house is from the nearest railroad tracks"? And how can you not love a coach who can suggest, when pondering why the university kept rehiring him, "I think they kept me because some of my players seemed to be better people for the experience," and not have it sound like a crow?


From the Inside Flap
"Pete Carril is the Stonewall Jackson of ncaa basketball—unbelievable in victory, unforgettable in defeat."—John McPhee. "Pete Carril is very clear about what he wants in basketball, and he wills things to happen."—Senator Bill Bradley. "Warm and wise . . . disarmingly candid."—Publishers Weekly. "The strong take from the weak, but the smart take from the strong." So said Pete Carril’s father, a Spanish immigrant who worked for thirty-nine years in a Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, steel mill. His son stood only five-foot-six but nonetheless became an All-State basketball player in high school, a Little All-American in college, and a highly successful coach. After twenty-nine years as Princeton University’s basketball coach, he became an assistant coach with the nba’s Sacramento Kings. In 1997 he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Coach Carril inspired his teams with his own strength of character and drive to win, and he demonstrated time and again how a smart and dedicated team could compete successfully against bigger programs and faster, stronger, more athletic players. His teams won thirteen conference championships, made eleven NCAA Tournament appearances, and led the nation in defense fourteen times. Throughout his reflections on a lifetime spent on the basketball court and the bench, Carril demonstrates deep respect for the contest, his empathy and engagement with the players, humility with his own achievements, a pragmatic vision of discipline and fundamentals, and an enduring joy in the game. This is an inspiring and wonderful book, even for those who never made a basket. Dan White is an award-winning freelance writer, the author of eight books, and a contributor to the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Detroit Free Press. Bob Knight won three NCAA titles as men's basketball coach at Indiana; he currently coaches at Texas Tech.


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Last year, Carril retired from head coaching after 43 years, of which 29 were spent at Princeton. His memoirs, written with freelancer White, are a warm and wise series of random jottings about the values he learned growing up in a Pennsylvania steel town, his views on society, athletes past and present and, of course, his philosophy of winning basketball. Some of his observations are lengthy, like that on defensive fundamentals, while others are disarmingly brief but equally trenchant: "A good mind has never handicapped a player." He believes sports do not build character but reveal it, and his greatest enthusiasm is reserved for the team player. He is disarmingly candid about recruiting, which, he confesses, he did badly, probably all to the good because Princeton's sports programs are ultra-clean; he even wonders whether he could have been such a straight arrow if he'd been at a less scrupulous college. (Mar.)


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