Belief in themselves is Tigers' most realistic weapon

People across the country are being very realistic when it comes to the men's basketball team's trip to the NCAA tournament.

The national media essentially agrees that Princeton has the pedigree in Walton and Thompson, but not the talent.

The general public concurs — in most online polls around 99 percent of the respondents are picking UNC.

And maybe the harsh reality of midterms has made people pessimistic, but I've heard the word 'realistically' an awful lot lately, especially around here. The students I've talked to all feel that the Tigers will play hard and lose by about 287 points.

I've been realistic all year. I realistically thought that there was no way Princeton would win the league. And now, on the eve of Princeton's first-round matchup with North Carolina, everyone and everything is once again telling me to be realistic.

But I'm sick of it.

I'm bored with realism.

Princeton can beat North Carolina.

There you go. I said it. And I'm not joking, I'm not being sarcastic. It is possible.

In fact, Princeton has pulled off big upsets before.

It's just that somewhere along the line, these Tigers started believing that they were actually good.

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I mean, it's crazy, it's insane. This team is not good. They're short. They're slow. They're young. They can't dunk. No one picked them to win the league. Some even picked them to finish fourth. Early in the season, I would have bet that the Cap and Gown IM basketball team could have destroyed this squad.

Early on, they lived up to their billing. Duke crushed them. But then again, realistically, that was supposed to happen. It was shaping up to be the season that could have been. Princeton fans were supposed to suffer through confident in the fact that we could have won, we would have won, if everything had gone according to plan.

Then the Tigers beat Xavier in their first game at home — a team that was supposed to walk over them.

Then the league season started. The Tigers pounded Columbia and Cornell, handled Yale, and won a thriller against Brown. And suddenly they were on top of the league. Princeton believed.

And in college basketball, belief can take you a long way. When the season began, Penn looked like it was good enough to cruise through the Ivy league and challenge some of the better teams in the country. The Quakers lost to Maryland by only six points and to Seton Hall by two.

But then something happened. Maybe it was a fear of heights, but something kept Penn from being the team it was supposed to be.The Quakers got blown out at Harvard. Then Princeton came in and blew them out of their own gym.

It was the final game of the regular season that really told the story. For Princeton, it seemed as if there was never any doubt. Penn built a lead early in the first-half, but midway through the second half the Tigers poured it on. The team that wasn't supposed to, did.

The Tigers have talent, to be sure, but it was something else that won them the Ivy League. They knew they could win. No one told them. They just knew.

Forget the talented teams. Forget the high-powered teams from high-powered conferences. It's the teams that believe that get you every time.

Belief in themselves was probably the only thing the 1996 squad had going for it in its first-round NCAA tournament matchup with UCLA.

Princeton had every right to be dominated. The Bruins were the defending national champions, and probably better than the No. 4 seed they had been given. Princeton was led by junior Sydney Johnson, sophomore Mitch Henderson, sophomore Steve Goodrich, and freshman Gabe Lewullis. The Tigers were young then, just as they are now, and little was expected of them coming into the postseason.

But that team believed too. And when UCLA went on a 10-3 run late in the second half, the Tigers did not fold. Instead, they scored seven straight to tie the score.

What happened next is Princeton basketball legend. The sophomore Goodrich found the freshman Lewullis on a backdoor cut, and David had beaten Goliath.

"This marks a big step for our team," junior captain Sydney Johnson said after the game. "[Carril] was talking earlier and said, 'It doesn't matter if I believe . . . It matters if you believe.'"

Those Tigers, young and overmatched, were believers. These Tigers, young and overmatched, are too.

And sometimes that is more important than being realistic.