College Basketball: The Bruin Breed

COLLEGE BASKETBALL

On many winter nights in college towns throughout the U.S., it looked as if the Beatles must have dropped in.

During a snowfall on the University of Michigan campus, 5,000 students shivered in sleeping bags while waiting in line all night for tickets. In El Paso the fans pored over obituary notices, calling bereaved families in the tiny hope of snapping up the loved one's ticket.

In Philadelphia, New York, Boston and scores of other cities, it was the same story, all without a Beatle bob in sight.

The attraction was five men, not four, crewcut, not shaggy, and as All-America as college basketball.

That, of course, is just what they were playing, in a season that, by official count, has attracted more fans than ever before.

Rootin' Shootin'. Why? Explains Texas Western Basketball Coach Don Haskins: "It's just a much better game than it ever used to be." The most exciting thing about the new game is that winning teams like the U.C.L.A. Bruins are leaning on runts such as Walt Hazzard (6 ft. 2 in.), who make up in speed, style and teamwork what they lack in brute size. In all team sports, it is the drama of score—the breakaway touchdown, the grand-slam homer—that makes the excitement. In basketball, the scoringest sport in the land, it is the nerve-burning electricity of the highpoint game. The 1963-64 season saw shooting that would have been the envy of Marshal Dillon: an average of 148.8 points per game, two-team total, for 3,890 major college games—a full 9.8 points higher than just a year ago.

By March, 17 teams had averaged more than 85 points a game; last year only two teams did. Seven players banged in more than 30 points a game this season; last year none did. And seldom has a season seen such fast, rough, yet precise play.

Post-Season Prime. The fastest, roughest basketball of all comes in the post-season games of the N.I.T. and N.C.A.A. championships, whose finals were played off last week. When perennially inept New Mexico suddenly got ept this year and landed in the N.I.T., Albuquerque kicked in $6,000 for a special single-city telecast of its heroes. The New Mexico team smothered N.Y.U., but lost ignominiously (54-86) to the Bradley Braves.

At the N.C.A.A. finals in Kansas City, the play was as cold and ruthless as a ragged axe. U.C.L.A.'s Walt Hazzard, a jumping Jack who chopped through all Duke's beanstalks, carried a steely team to its 30th consecutive victory, beating Duke 98-83. It was the Bruins' first national championship, and highest score ever in an N.C.A.A. final.