College Basketball

Kuester paused and said, "It was the best pass and catch we made all season."

BACKDOOR PLAY

Princeton won the Ivy League championship the same way it runs its offense—very deliberately. With three games remaining the Tigers were 10-1 in league play and had clinched at least a tie for the title. They took a mighty cut on Feb. 28 at Pennsylvania and whiffed, losing 43-42. Dartmouth hurled strike two last Friday by beating the Tigers 53-43 and putting them in the position of having to defeat Harvard the next night to avoid a one-game playoff with the Big Green.

"This ends one of the worst weeks of my life," said Princeton coach Pete Carril after a 73-64 win over the Crimson. "I felt like the guy whose house catches fire and wonders, Was somebody trying to punish me?"

The Tigers, who will enter the NCAA tournament with a 19-7 record, buried Harvard early in the second half with a 25-8 run. They also converted seven straight three-pointers in the half, including four by senior Bob Scrabis. The victory gave Carril his seventh Ivy crown, but his first since 1984. "With one senior, one sophomore and all these freshmen, I'd have felt great going 19-7 and not winning the league," said Carril. "But to have gotten a chance to steal a title and then not done it would have felt terrible."

SHORT SHOTS

Colorado State of the WAC clinched its first regular-season conference championship in 20 years by converting 14 of 18 shots (77.8%) in the second half of an 89-72 win over BYU. As usual the Rams were led by 6'8" senior forward Pat Durham, who scored 31 points....

If New Mexico State doesn't make the NCAA tournament, the Aggies, who are 19-10, might blame the state legislature for mandating that both State and New Mexico schedule at least one game a year against a smaller, in-state school. This season State complied by routing Western New Mexico 89-54, but the NCAA selection committee frowns on the scheduling of patsies. "If you win, you don't get anything for it," says Aggie coach Neil McCarthy. "If you lose, you get your——run through a ringer."...

Robert Morris edged Fairleigh Dickinson 67-66 in the Northeast Conference tournament final to gain an NCAA bid. During the game Robert Morris students flashed signs that read WE WANT ARIZONA and WE WANT OKLAHOMA. Said coach Jarrett Durham afterward, "For the record, I did not say that."...

Ten nicknames that you've never heard on ESPN: the Alaska-Fairbanks Nanooks, the UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs, the Amherst Lord Jeffs, the Oberlin Yeomen, the Tufts Jumbos, the Webster Gorloks, the Whittier Poets, the South Dakota Tech Hardrockers, the Heidelberg Student Princes and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Bloodhounds....