Article Tags

“NCAA”

from paw.princeton.edu

from paw.princeton.edu

The band calls them “the hecklers”: two students who go to as many home men’s basketball games as the plaid-clad band itself does — which is to say, all of them.

They stand, dressed in orange and black, at the front of the student section in Jadwin Gym, armed with a megaphone and a cruel wit. Among the opponents’ offenses that attract their attention are “looking unkempt” and “general lack of talent.”

“It’s fair — it’s all fair,” said Andrew Whitener ’12. “We work with what they provide us,” added a jersey-clad Tom Boggiano ’12.

Boggiano and Whitener, who play varsity baseball and have friends on the basketball team, have attended every home basketball game since their freshman year. Since then, they’ve noticed the bleachers behind them filling up…

To read more, read the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

Once upon a time, as recently as this decade, the Princeton Men’s Basketball team ruled the Ivy League. But then we started to suck hardcore, perhaps most notably when, in 2005, Princeton scored just 21 points in the entire game against something called Monmouth University. If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, it turned out that scoring the legal drinking age was an NCAA record, but a record in a totally bad news bears sort of way–as in, no other team has ever sucked so much.

Reminiscing about all this makes us pine for the 1980s and 1990s, when the basketball team was totally baller. Exhibit A: In 1996 they defeated UCLA, the defending national champions, in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Watch these couple video clips and you’ll understand why the stands in Jadwin Gym were built for so many: