YouTube Gold: The Year Of The Tiger

Bill Bradley’s Princeton team had an amazing run

Duke and Princeton’s basketball programs are tied together in some interesting ways. First obviously, both are excellent academic schools that have great basketball traditions. Second, Princeton was the first team Duke scheduled in the newly built Duke Indoor Stadium in 1940 (Duke won). And third, Bill Bradley.

When Vic Bubas was turning Duke into an elite program, his first big-time recruit was 6-5 Art Heyman. His second was 6-4 Jeff Mullins. His third? The 6-5 Bradley.

Bradley committed to play for Duke but his father persuaded him to change his mind and go to Princeton. The late Carroll Youngkin once told us that he was golfing with Bubas when Bubas found out that Bradley wasn’t coming and that he broke or threw a club. It’s been a while, we can’t remember (Yunk’s son Glenn was recently elected governor of Virginia).

Bradley went on to have a legendary career at Princeton and later with the Knicks, after accepting a Rhodes Scholarship and spending time at Oxford).

Amazingly, Bradley led Princeton to the 1965 Final Four and the Tigers came very close to defeating Michigan, losing 93-76. Bradley scored 41 in that loss. This film is a documentary of that extraordinary season.

Although he never played with Mullins at Duke, the two were Olympic teammates in 1964.