El-Nokali back in hoops

Ahmed El-Nokali '02 has basketball in his blood.

It's why he is spending another winter working two jobs, managing hedge funds by day for Merrill Lynch and coaching Princeton Day School's basketball team by night.

It's why he spent his summer playing the game, both in a low-key intra-company recreational league and in Princeton's competitive summer league.

And it's why he will be spending Feb. 13 in Harrisburg, PA — and is as thrilled about it as most people are about a trip to Cancun.

"It's a semi-pro league — the Harrisburg Horizons — I just found out about it today," he says, chatting as he makes his early-evening drive from his office in Plainsborough to his basketball office in Princeton, the excitement clear in his voice. "[Brian] Earl ['99] and Gabe Lewullis ['99] and [Kit] Mueller ['91] are on the team too, I think."

El-Nokali says he expected to be in this situation one day — coaching, playing, keeping the basketball flowing through his blood — but not so soon after graduation.

For four years, the skinny six-foot, four-inch point guard ran the Princeton offense with aplomb. He started 82 games over four years — rarely leaving the court during his final two seasons — his topnotch decision-making skills always providing a steadying influence.

Not surprisingly, the team-oriented player's favorite memories are of the famous "Miracle at the Palestra" comeback game his freshman year and the Tigers' victory over Penn that sent them to the NCAA tournament his junior year.

But by the time he finished his playing career in the spring of 2002, he was admittedly burned out, in need of some time away from the game.

Soon enough, though, he was back in the familiar haunts of Jadwin Gym. It was there, one day in early Oct. 2003, as he shot around with some friends after the Tigers' practice, that former men's basketball head coach John Thompson III '88 approached him the with news that got his blood pumping again.

The head coaching job had opened up at Princeton Day School, just a few months before the season was due to start. With the blessings of Merrill Lynch, he took the job.

Just as importantly, he had the support of the Princeton basketball family. He mentions the tips that Thompson and athletic director Gary Walters '67 gave him — "Anytime someone like that gives you advice, you listen" — and he recalls the occasions that Thompson came to PDS games with his children and stayed afterwards to share insights on how to maximize his players' abilities.

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He didn't run much of the Princeton offense, only installing one play. But he has preached the same attention to details and intensity that he learned from his former coaches, like Thompson, Bill Carmody, and current head coach Joe Scott '87.

"I'm still working out my style," El-Nokali says. "I find myself imitating my coaches more than I ever thought I would."

Whatever he did, it worked. In his first season at the helm, he led PDS to a 16-9 record and the State Prep B division championship game (they lost). This season, he expects big things out of his team and is installing a bit more of the Princeton offense, now that he has the shooters to execute it.

Somewhere along the way, coaching got him excited about playing again. So he played with a group of friends from work in the Merrill Lynch Summer League and lit up the opposition, leading his team to the championship. He also played in the more serious Princeton Summer League, a league filled with former and current Ivy players, on a team that reached the semifinals.

Still, he understands that his best playing days are behind him. Each fall since he graduated, El-Nokali has returned to Dillon Gym for the undergraduate career fair on behalf of Merrill Lynch. And each year, he says with a laugh, fewer and fewer people recognize him. But that doesn't keep him from having fun playing every chance he gets.

Besides, he knows he has a future as Coach El-Nokali. He is not sure at what level he'd like to coach. He briefly considered pursuing a job as a college third assistant for this winter but decided he still had plenty to learn at the high school level and wasn't ready yet to be a full-time coach.

Odds are he will end up at the college level, though, considering the way the Princeton system has successfully spread around the country in recent years. If he makes the jump, he would be the latest in the progression of great Tiger point guards — Scott, Chris Mooney '94 and Mitch Henderson '98 — to do so.

None of them could resist the calling of the game they loved, and El-Nokali can't either. It's not just basketball running through their blood — it's basketball, the Orange and Black way.

"When you play, you realize it's pure basketball," El-Nokali says, the excitement growing in his voice again. "It's addictive. You get excited about playing and you want to spread it."