RICHMOND, Va. — The plaques and pictures hang from his office walls, celebrating a storied basketball tradition of league titles and NCAA Tournament upsets.
But the tradition isn't Princeton's. There's not a trace of Orange and Black to be seen, not a hint of his playing day exploits to be found. His 1,071 points, two team MVP awards and two NCAA tournament berths might as well never have happened.
Chris Mooney '94 is the head coach of the University of Richmond men's basketball team now, so Blue and Red he will bleed.
"This isn't Princeton, this is Richmond," he says. "We have to celebrate what Richmond basketball is all about and continue to move forward and build on that tradition."
There's plenty to celebrate here, he tells you, listing off the qualities that made his decision to take the job this May quick and easy: the program that takes pride in winning the right way, the high academic standards, the beautiful campus.
Hold on — didn't he just describe Princeton?
"Exactly," he says with a grin. "I love Princeton. Hopefully I'll grow to really love Richmond."
Now it makes sense. It's not that he doesn't want to wear Orange and Black anymore. He just has no choice but to don only Blue and Red these days, because that's what good coaches do — dive right in and live and breathe their basketball team. And in the name of Pete Carril, Chris Mooney is going to be a good — no, make that a great — coach.
In the name of Pete Carril, that's exactly what this story is about. He's the legendary Princeton basketball coach who they — Mooney, Joe Scott '87, John Thompson '88 and the others still in the pipeline — all learned from, the little old Yoda of a man who pushed them with all his might for four years. He's the source of the on-court intensity and the little mannerisms, the exasperated wave off, the talking in questions. And he still motivates them even today, watching proudly from afar as they continue what he began.
"It's amazing. Every player at Princeton's relationship with Coach Carril had difficult times because he was so demanding," Mooney says. "But when you can be a little removed and feel the support he's giving you, you know it's genuine."
Carril was the reason Mooney came to Princeton. Mooney knew he wanted to coach someday, he says, and who better to learn from than the best?
So he made the trip from Archbishop Ryan High in Philadelphia to the Jadwin Gym spotlight, starting the first game of his freshman year and all 106 games that came after. All the while, he lurked by his coach's side.
"He was excited about it. He really liked the idea [of me coaching], I think," Mooney says. "I don't know if he thought it would wear off."
It didn't wear off, though it's easy to see Mooney doing something else. At first glance, the lanky former English major seems more like the next John Fleming then the next Pete Carril. And listening to his soft-spoken, articulate words, it seems he could give a darn good Chaucer lecture if he put his mind to it.
But basketball was his career, right from the start. While Scott and Thompson and others tried life away from the game for a few years before Carril brought them back, Mooney wanted any basketball job he could get, never mind where. At 22 he was the head coach of Landsdale Catholic High School, at 25 the head coach of Division III Beaver College.
When he got to Beaver, he barely had a budget, a staff, a gym — or even a team, just six players. But no matter. He taught them the Princeton offense, and, in year number two, Beaver set a school record for wins.
In the fall of 2000, another of Carril's disciples called, and Mooney moved to Colorado Springs to help Scott resurrect Air Force. Over four years, they turned a moribund program into a national darling and top-25 team. And all the while, Mooney lurked by the coach's side once more, talking with Scott about "every single aspect of basketball."
When Scott returned to Princeton in April 2004, Mooney took the reins at Air Force and became the fifth youngest head coach in D-I. He turned in another solid season and proved he could do it himself. Now he was the hot coaching commodity. It took only a few days for Richmond to offer him a job in May and even less time for him to say "yes" and be on the move once more.
Still, he knows that the locals are a tad suspicious of him. In Richmond, it takes three or four generations to become a native, and the last two coaches barely lasted three or four years before moving on to higher-profile jobs. So the locals can't help but wonder if Mooney, still so young and upwardly mobile, will do the same.
But if Carril taught him anything, Mooney says, it was "not to be a phony." He knows he can't tell his Spiders to devote themselves to the team and to the system — to him, really — and then go back to his office and look at pictures of Tigers battling Quakers.
So as he sits in his office working away on yet another impossibly hot mid-August day, the ghosts of Spiders past watch over him. Not just on his walls, but all along the hall that leads from his office to the Robins Center gym, where a few thousand red and blue seats overlook the empty floor.
He can't wait to get out on that court and work with his players, can't wait to turn the Princeton Offense into Richmond's offense. Heck, he can't wait to turn the backdoor layup Blue and Red.
But want to know a secret? Look past all that Red and Blue he's covered in. Look closer, look inside.
It's what you suspected all along: deep down, Chris Mooney is still as Orange and Black as they come.
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