Men's Basketball: Johnson '97 keeps legacy alive

Jadwin Gymnasium, home to Princeton basketball for 41 years, is a puzzling sort of place. A mess of orange and black and Astroturf green, it sits tucked away in a far-flung corner of campus, hidden from the sight of all but the most dedicated of travelers. Its buttressed ceilings and dreary, gray walls, only rarely filled by the thousands it was designed to hold, suggest something of an industrial bent — a silent acknowledgement of a time when efficiency was king and aesthetics the court jester.

I took a seat above the court, my damp wool coat placed limply beside me as the 16 members of the men’s basketball team trickled in below. There were a few faces I recognized and a few more I did not — a motley bunch of scrappers and playmakers, known quantities and unproven talent.

It was Nov. 4, one of the last days of a working vacation for a team that would start its season in less than a week. As a freshman grabbed a basketball and took a lazy shot, my eyes began to wander, moving back and forth across the vast gymnasium floor until they settled on the man I had come this far to see.

Sydney Johnson ’97 stood below the basket, the same spot he has occupied an incalculable number of times in his surprisingly short basketball life. Seventeen years ago he first strode into the arena, a young freshman from Towson, Md. He entered the program at the height of its success: Pete Carril, well on his way to the Basketball Hall of Fame by 1993, had just led his Tigers to four consecutive conference championships, punching an enviable number of tickets to the Big Dance.

Of course, Johnson had known what he was getting into. A meticulous student of basketball history, he had settled on attending either Princeton or Penn, long the measuring stick for basketball dominance in the Ancient Eight, and it was that knowledge that had brought him to Carril.

“I was focused,” Johnson said. “I came to compete hard, to learn from a coach who was brilliant and intense, and from assistants who were the same.”

He made his mark early on, excelling from outside with his hiccup of a shot and working his way toward the school three-point record that he eventually would hold. For a few magical days in the winter of 1997, the man could simply not miss, making 11 consecutive three-point shots to write his place in Princeton history.

“When I visited Columbia, on an early recruiting visit, I really understood his reputation,” said Sean Gregory ’98, a teammate of Johnson’s. “The coach asked me what other schools I was considering, and when I mentioned that I was thinking of coming to Princeton, I remember him saying, ‘You’re not going to play — Sydney Johnson is there.’ ”

With news of his talent spreading, Johnson stayed focused, his gaze fixed on the next game, the next practice, the next chance to improve. By 1996, with his first two years already behind him, he turned his thoughts squarely upon the intense rivalry with Penn. Four painful times over two difficult years, the Quakers had beaten the Tigers — his Tigers, really, for he had been named the team’s captain as a sophomore, one of the youngest to ever receive that honor.

And then, in his junior year, it happened twice more. The first could be forgiven, a tight 57-55 loss at Princeton’s home court. A two-point game means you were close, hanging in until the end, victory within reach and success in the palm of your hand.

The second time, though, it was more difficult to explain. The Tigers had traveled to the legendary Palestra, only 40 minutes standing between them and the March Madness berth they craved.

The Tigers were thumped, from end to end, by a Penn side that simply would not give in. With their 63-49 drubbing of Carril’s mighty team — the Tigers had brushed aside every other Ivy League squad that season — the Quakers forced a playoff that would decide it all.

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Johnson knew, even though with his humility he would never admit it, that it was his moment.

“We were a really good basketball team that season, but one way or another we just couldn’t figure Penn out,” he said. “I remember thinking before that game ... that I needed to be in a mindset where we would find a way to win, no matter what.”

And that he did, when on March 9, 1996, Johnson stood on the court at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. — a neutral site agreed to by the two warring sides — and prepared himself for tip-off.

“It was a packed gym, hundreds of fans from both sides,” Gregory said. “When the game went into overtime, Sydney took over and won it by himself. He wasn’t the kind of guy that you thought would go on a run, but for those minutes on that day, that’s what he did.”

For the first time in Johnson’s career, on that emotional night, Princeton beat their Philadelphia rivals, winning 63-56. The rest, of course, is history: Carril announced his retirement, and the Tigers went to Indianapolis and defeated Jim Harrick and the University of California, Los Angeles, the defending national champions, in the NCAA tournament. A year later, Johnson went off to Europe to pursue a professional basketball career.

Now, 14 years after he hoisted the team on his shoulders and led the Tigers to victory, Johnson is back to take another shot. As the coach of the preseason favorite to win the Ivy League, Johnson’s meat-and-potatoes attitude has hardly left him.

“That practice or that game that is going on at that point is the most important thing that’s going on for me,” Johnson said. “I’ve found that when you don’t have that singular focus is when you start to make mistakes.”

As Johnson walked out from under the basket and toward the center of the court, ready to start practice on that wet November afternoon and take another step toward March, he playfully blocked a final warm-up shot and called the session to order. It was time to work.