His family announced the death in a statement posted on the Princeton Tigers website. He did not say where he died or give the cause of his death. As head men’s coach from 1967 to 1996, Carril (pronounced care-ILL) taught a thinking man’s basketball at Princeton. As a member of the Ivy League, Princeton could not offer athletic scholarships and its academic demands were high, but Carril’s teams, almost always outmatched and overmatched, won twice as often as they lost. His record at Princeton was 514-261, with 13 Ivy titles, 11 National Collegiate Athletic Association championship appearances, two National Invitation Tournament appearances (his team won in 1975) and only one losing season. Fourteen of his Princeton teams led the nation in scoring defense. In 1997, he was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. He highlighted an intentional off-ball offense that kept players passing the ball and setting up layups until a shooter got open or someone broke free at the basket on a patented backdoor play. Scores were low and no matter how much the opponents prepared, they were frustrated and often lost their balance. “Playing Princeton is like going to the dentist,” said Jim Valvano, the North Carolina State coach who died in 1993 at age 47. “You know that along the way it can make you better, but while it’s happening it can be very, very painful.” New York Times sports writer Bill Pennington wrote, “The most casual basketball fan could admire and understand a Pete Carril team at first glance. The most dedicated hoops junkie could be mesmerized by a Pete Carril team on the move. It was not talent basketball, but team basketball. It may not be the way everyone was supposed to play, but it was the way everyone was trying to play.” In the annual NCAA tournament, Carril’s teams may lose to national powers, but not before upsetting them and threatening an upset. In the first round alone, Princeton lost to Georgetown 50-49 in 1989, Arkansas 68-64 in 1990 and Villanova 50-48 in 1991. Carril’s last collegiate victory came on March 14, 1996, in Indianapolis, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament against UCLA, the defending champion. Thirteenth-ranked Princeton, trailing by 7 points with six minutes remaining, scored — what else? — a backdoor with 3.9 seconds left and won. The next day, The Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper, ran this headline on Page 1: “David 43, Goliath 41.” Carril said he was under no illusions: “If we played UCLA 100 times, they would win 99 times.” (The Tigers went on to lose, 63-41, in the second round to Mississippi State.) Around Princeton’s campus he was a respectable, cracked-voiced figure in a worn sweater and baggy khakis (or, when dressed formally, a bow tie). A colleague once described him as “a wrinkled midget who would look as out of place in an Armani suit as he would in a Vera Wang dress.” And during games he was known for an animated coaching style. Every year at his first practice, Carril gave the same speech to his players. “I know about your academic load,” he said. “I know how hard it is to give time to play here, but let’s get one thing straight. In my book, there is no such thing as an Ivy League player. When you walk out of that locker room and cross that white line, you’re basketball players, period.” But he also told his players: “Princeton is a special place with some very special professors. It is something special to be taught by one of them. But you’re not special just because you happened to go here.” Pedro José (later known as Peter Joseph) Carril was born on July 10, 1930, in Bethlehem, Penzion. said his son. At Bethlehem High School, Pete was an all-state basketball player and at Lafayette, where he played for Butch van Brenda Kolff, he was a Junior All-American. He then coached high school basketball in Pennsylvania for 12 years while earning a master’s degree in education from Lehigh University in 1959. In the 1966-67 season, he coached Lehigh to an 11-12 record. Then Van Brenda Kolf, who coached Princeton, left to coach the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association. Princeton considered Bobby Knight and Larry Brown as successors. Instead, he took Carril. Retired from college coaching after the 1995-96 season. “I’ve been dodging bullets for 30 years,” Carril said. “I find I don’t see as much. I thought the guys felt my coaching was worth five points a game to them. Maybe they were, but I have a feeling they don’t feel that way now. I think I’m making less of a difference.” The following year, he became an assistant coach for the NBA’s Sacramento Kings under coach Rick Adelman, spending most of his time breaking down game tapes. He remained with the team for most of the next decade, retiring in 2006, but three years later, at age 78, he returned to the Kings as a consultant. “Being an assistant doesn’t bother me at all,” he said. “The aggravation and the stomach ache and the headaches you get when you see things go wrong or when you lose, or all those problems you have as a coach, I’ve had enough.” With Dan White he wrote The Smart Take From the Strong: The Basketball Philosophy of Pete Carril (1997). His coaching methods were even the subject of an academic paper by a Fordham University marketing professor, Francis Petit, titled “What Executives Can Learn From Pete Carril.” Information about his survivors was not immediately available. But he will be remembered, even though none of his teams won the ultimate honor. He missed that too. “Winning a national championship is not something you’re going to see us do at Princeton,” he said in his final years there. “Years ago I gave it up. What does it mean, anyway? When I die, maybe two guys will walk by my grave and one will say to the other, “Poor thing. I never won a national championship.’ And I won’t listen to a word they say.” Frank Litsky, a longtime Times sportswriter, died in 2018. William McDonald contributed reporting.
