Sport: Midseason Form

The Southwest's two top teams met last week when Texas A. & M.'s rugged squad took on Texas Christian's poised veterans. T.C.U. was a solid favorite to win. For most of the game, played in a driving rain, T.C.U. made the oddsmakers look good. The Aggies were bottled deep in their own territory by fumbles, threw back repeated T.C.U. goal-line assaults, finally yielded a touchdown on a pass play in the third quarter. But then A. & M.'s little (150 Ibs.) Halfback Don Watson, who beat T.C.U. last year with a 51-yd. run, caught fire. Starting from his 43-yd. line, he scooted around left end and squirmed and squirted to a first down on the T.C.U. 20. Four plays later he lobbed a soggy pass to the goal line for the score. The extra point gave the game to the Aggies, 7-6, and made them the team to beat for the conference title.

¶In the East, Syracuse, sparked by the bulling runs of a 212-lb. halfback named Jimmy Brown, battered its way to a 7-0 win over a stubborn Army team. Ivy League favorite Yale, held to a single touchdown in the first half, started punching gaping holes in the outmanned Cornell line, won 25-7. Second-ranked Princeton matched Colgate touchdown for touchdown for three periods, then -got its smoothly deceptive attack functioning to win 28-20. Columbia Quarterback Claude Benham threaded his long passes past Harvard's defenders, led his team to a 26-20 upset victory.

¶ Michigan State rolled over and around Notre Dame. As usual, State was no better than tied (7-7) at the half, as usual roared out after Coach Daugherty's briefing to massacre the enemy. With State's three sets of backs blasting out the yard age, they swamped the Irish 47-14. With Fullback John Herrnstein scoring three touchdowns, Michigan rolled to a 34-20 victory over stubborn Northwestern, established itself as a leading candidate for the Rose Bowl. (Michigan State is ineligible as last year's winner.) Penn State, throttling Ohio State's vaunted ground attack (which had averaged 333 yds. a game in victories over Nebraska, Stanford and Illinois), scored the upset of the week with a slim but well-earned 7-6 victory. Oklahoma, which had not been scored on in eight regular season games, was momentarily startled when Kansas matched its first-period touchdown, later turned on its explosive power to win its 34th straight game by a score of 34-12.

¶ On the coast, undefeated U.S.C. spotted Washington a one-touchdown lead in the first quarter, then powered its way to a surprisingly easy 35-7 victory. Stanford jammed the Oregon attack and, with Quarterback John Brodie in fine touch, scored a workmanlike 21-7 win.

¶Still looking like the class of the South, undefeated Georgia Tech shredded a beefy but inexperienced Auburn line, shook its fleet backs loose on long scoring strikes, won going away, 28-7. Mississippi was knocked from the undefeated ranks by an underdog Tulane team, 10-3. North Carolina finally won its first game under its new coach, Jim Tatum, by defeating (34-6) Tatum's former team, Maryland -which has taken almost nothing but beatings since Tatum left.