With Princeton heading out on their final Ivy road trip of the season, the time seemed appropriate to re-share a piece I wrote in April of last year about the Tigers' 1989 visit to Dartmouth and Harvard. Princeton clinched the Ivy crown on the Crimson's floor, the orange and black's first championship in five years - a scenario many reading would very much like to see duplicated this weekend. If you enjoy the following, I'd also recommend a subsequent story entitled Crewcuts. - JS
I don't remember how I talked them into it, but on the first Saturday of March in 1989, I somehow convinced my parents (and extremely skeptical younger sister) that we should load up the car and go to the Princeton/Harvard game outside Boston as a family.
We didn't head all the way up to Dartmouth the previous night, where the Big Green had been victorious 53-43 over the Tigers. Now the losers of two straight, Princeton needed to win their final conference game to claim the program's first Ivy League championship in five years.
A loss to the Crimson (who beat the Tigers by six at Jadwin Gym a month previous) combined with a Dartmouth win over Penn and the two teams would end the season tied at 10-4 for the 1988-89 Ivy crown.
Perhaps it was impending history that sold my folks on making this trip? Perhaps I just begged to the proper degree? Whatever it was, this is a game that cemented my teenage love affair with Princeton basketball.
While my memories of the contest two decades later consist solely of the gym at Harvard being extraordinarily dimly lit and the dogpile of orange and black at center court after the final buzzer, I've always been glad the 15 year-old me captured three blurry pictures after the game on my tiny camera and kept these grainy documents tucked away in my old bedroom.
The first, of Princeton senior captain Bob Scrabis (#34) talking to WHWH broadcaster David Brody, is scanned above.
According to the news reports I've dug up this morning, Scrabis scored 19 points for the Tigers, 16 in the second half. Sophomore center Kit Mueller led all Princeton players with 21 on 8-8 shooting.
Early in the second half Princeton made five straight threes, the first two and the fifth in a row all by Scrabis. A 44-40 nailbiter was now a 59-41 ballgame.
Both Scrabis and Mueller played all 40 minutes.
Junior forward Matt Lapin (#33), who came on strong to finish the season, talking with WHWH.
The team races off the floor as Ivy champs, with Mueller (#00) in the center of the pack.
The outpouring of emotion in the celebration seconds after clinching the league shown by Princeton that night is something I have not seen matched by the nine Tiger squads who have secured Ivy titles since.
Two weeks later I'd be heading back to New England for my first Princeton game on a neutral site, riding on a chartered bus for the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
