NEW ORLEANS — Imagine for a moment that it’s June of 2000 and you’re Duke’s No. 2 assistant basketball coach Chris Collins.
Then imagine that No. 1 assistant Johnny Dawkins is hired by Army to be its new head coach, and suddenly, you’re elevated to the job of No. 1 assistant.
Then imagine that Shane Battier gets drafted by a major league baseball team and turns in his dark blue uniform for a few million green dollars.
Then imagine that Mike Dunleavy knocks on your door and tells you he’s homesick and is transferring to Oregon State.
Then imagine Carlos Boozer decides out of the blue that he’s going to take a year off from basketball to reflect on his life.
And then when you run to tell head guy Mike Krzyzewski that things are really in a mess, he informs you that, oh, by the way, he’s decided to take that coaching job that’s come open at Indiana University.
Now, if you’re Collins, you’re suddenly the Duke head coach and you’re doing the best you can to carry on. But then your most experienced guy, Nate James, tears up his ankle in practice.
Then you start the season and somehow win a few games, but Chris Duhon, who has started every single game for you, decides he’s had enough, throws up his hands and quits the team.
Now what do you do?
Why, you go on to win the league and make the NCAA Tournament, of course.
At least you do, if you’re the Princeton Tigers.
All that unlikely zaniness in the preceding paragraphs obviously didn’t happen to Duke, but change the names and the faces and places and it most certainly did happen to Princeton over the last nine months.
Every bit of it. One hundred percent. True story.
All five Tiger starters were supposed to be back this season from a 19-11 bunch. But one — the best one — chose baseball. One went back home, one took the year off. A key reserve, elevated to the starting lineup, quit. The most experienced remaining player got hurt. The successful head coach, Bill Carmody, and his top assistant really did exit for new jobs just before the season.
And yet, former No. 2 assistant, John Thompson III, son of the John Thompson who won the national championship at Georgetown in 1984, led Princeton to a 16-10 record. The Tigers won their last five games to catch Brown and Penn and pull out a miracle Ivy League championship — their eighth in 13 years — and an automatic NCAA berth.
The new coach asked his famous dad what he should do and Big John told Little John to pray. Little John says he did.
“We didn’t have any time to dwell on who wasn’t here,” said Thompson. “We had what we had and we had to try and figure out a way to work together.”
The Tigers did exactly that. And they did pretty much what they have always done to dominate the Ivy League. They brought their center out to the 3-point line, ran their motion offense, exhausted the shot-clock, shot 3-pointers or layups on every possession and slowed opponents to a crawl with a tough matchup zone.
The reward for the tenacious Tigers’ heart-tugging turnaround is a No. 15 seed opposite No. 2 North Carolina in the South Regional. They’ll tangle tonight at about 10:20 at the Louisiana Superdome.
And knowing Thompson and the Tigers, they are actually imagining that they have a chance to win. How tough can winning one ballgame be after what they’ve been through.
“We’re going in to this game thinking we can win,” said Princeton sharpshooter Kyle Wente, who averages 8 ppg. You have to think like that.”
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