SAN FRANCISCO -- Like a ballroom dancer in a disco, Princeton basketball coach Pete Carril doesn't boogie to the popular beat.
While Oklahoma and Loyola-Marymount happily unleash 3-second offenses in search of the perfect 100-point half, Carril preaches the gospel of patience and control.
The Tigers frustrate their opponents with a back-cutting offense that lulls a defense to sleep. Pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass and then shoot. Often with the 45-second clock on its final tick.
'This will be a very, very difficult game for us,' said Xavier (Ohio) coach Pete Gillen, who will face the Tigers in Friday's opener of the MetLife Classic at the University of San Francisco. 'Our kids like to go. They don't want to play defense for 43 seconds. It will be like water torture.'
To college coaches, Carril has long been among a handful of gurus. But to the general public he's been a relative unknown, slaving away at an Ivy League university that does not give out athletic scholarships.
That was until last year's NCAA tournament. For 39 minutes and 30 seconds, Carril's Tigers dangled No. 1 Georgetown over the precipice of elimination before losing 50-49.
'It was a clinic,' said USF coach Jim Brovelli, whose squad takes on Canisius in the other opening-round contest with the championship and consolation games set for Saturday night. 'He's (Carril) got the game figured out.'
Gillen agrees.
'Pete Carril has forgotten more basketball than I'll ever learn,' he said. 'He is one of the best (college) coaches alive, dead or yet to be born.
'Playing Priceton is like reading an Edgar Allen Poe short story. It's full of horrors.'
The Tigers have a 5-1 record this season, including a 65-60 victory over Rutgers but face a difficult road trip with visits to the USF tournament and the Cutlass Classic at Michigan State before the end of the year.
'We're still developing as a team,' Carril said. 'Right now we're 5-1 with our loss coming to Dayton (who defeated DePaul Wednesday night). But we're not a team with great depth.'
Depth has never really been a characteristic of Carril's teams. He usually plays seven players at the most, but gets a maximum effort out of every player he puts on the court.
'He knows his players, his defenses, his offense,' said Gillen. 'They back-door you. They isolate you. They shoot the 3. He has talented players, but he also knows how to get the most out of them.'
Carril has also endeared himself to the basketball set with his worldliness. His total existence is not the hardwoods. He reads the classics, talks confidently about economics and has a strong opinion about world politics. All of which makes him a rarity.
'I know he knows more than I do about the foreign trade deficit,' Gillen said. 'He knows more about impressionism and all those other 'isms that I just couldn't get a handle on in college.'
But Carril likes to pawn himself off as just a simple man.
'I like going down to the corner bar and work out the problems of the world,' he said. 'Like (deposed Panamanian strongman Manuel) Noreiga. I know if we would have sent some of the old gang from Bethlehem (Pa.) down there, he won't have gotten away.'
And as for the Georgetown game.
'I've had some impressive victories here,' he said. 'We beat North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio State and teams of that caliber. But never have any of those games gotten the attention of the Georgetown game. I'm glad it's (the attention) starting to die down.'
