On his off days, Pete Carril's pants were so wrinkled, they looked as if he had slept in them. On game nights, his hair, white and wavy like a cuddly Wilford Brimley, was whisked off his face, just above the collar of his Princeton coaching shirt.

But his game plan, his blueprint for toppling some of college basketball's giants when he guided the Tigers for 29 years, was a thing of beauty. A back-door play to disrupt the NCAA men's basketball tournament was so effective, so below the rim, it remains proof that those slow of foot and quick of wit can affect every regional bracket and office pool.