HOOPS HISTORY: Salters hit winning shot in playoff with Princeton in 1980

For only the third time in Ivy League history, Penn will battle for the Ancient Eight's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament in a playoff game to break a regular-season conference tie. And keeping with the tradition of the epic Penn-Princeton rivalry, the two previous Quakers playoff games -- held in the 1980 and 1981 seasons -- were also against the arch-rival Tigers. The Quakers pulled off a last-minute victory in the 1980 playoff game when senior captain James "Booney" Salters swished a jump shot with 11 seconds left in the game -- giving the Quakers the 50-49 victory. "I'll remember that 10-12 seconds for the rest of my life," Salters said. "Still today I get excited talking about this stuff." The entire 1979-80 season was as intense as the single playoff game was for Penn. The previous season found the Quakers advancing all the way to the Final Four before falling to Magic Johnson's Michigan State team. But at the end of that magical season, the Quakers lost almost every key player. "We were basically a new team from the Final Four team," said Bob Weinhauer, coach of the Quakers from 1977 to 1982 and the current general manager of the Houston Rockets. After starting the 1979-80 season 0-4, Penn rebounded and held onto first place in the league for all of January and February -- until its second encounter with the Tigers. Princeton prevailed in overtime, 78-69, and a few days later defeated Columbia to create a tie atop the Ivy standings with the Quakers and force an one-game playoff game at Lehigh. "Since we were a Final Four team, there was a tremendous amount of interest in Penn basketball at that time," Weinhauer said. "I felt like we took the whole Palestra with us to Lehigh." The Quakers and Tigers traded baskets down to the last minute in the playoff game. With 31 seconds left, Princeton freshman guard Gary Knapp put the Tigers up, 49-48. But the Tigers lead did not last long as Salters threw up the game-winning shot 20 seconds later. "Everyone was celebrating," said Salters, who currently has his own real estate and consulting practices on Long Island. "But Princeton still got a shot off." It was Knapp who tried again to put up Princeton's game-winning shot. But his foul-line jumper rolled off the rim as time expired, sending the Quakers back to the tournament. The 1979-80 Quakers advanced to the second round of the NCAAs before falling to Duke. Despite the excitement of the 1979-80 team's playoff game and tournament march, the 1980-81 playoff game was not so successful for the Quakers. The Tigers exacted revenge with a 54-40 win, ending Penn's streak of three-straight NCAA appearances. "They just got away from us in that game," said Weinhauer, adding that there was no real explanation for the 54-40 defeat. Ten minutes into the game, the Quakers were already down 18-4, and Princeton never looked back. While the Tigers advanced to the NCAAs, the Quakers earned an invitation to the NIT Tournament, where they lost to West Virginia in the first round. "When Princeton gets a 10-12 point lead, it feels like a 15-20 point lead," Weinhauer said. "I never felt like we were in that game." So the next episode of the Penn-Princeton rivalry will be played out tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. at Lehigh's Stabler Arena -- again with a trip to the Big Dance at stake. "When you talk about Penn and Princeton, it's do or die," Salters said. "You don't want to lose to those guys."

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