Olympic Basketballers

College basketball teams in the U. S. get the most publicity but they are not necessarily the ablest. Last week, in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden, the five college teams that qualified for the tournament to decide U. S. basketball entrants in next summer's Olympic Games fared poorly. Basketball representatives of two organizations as thoroughly nonacademic as Universal Pictures Corp. of Hollywood, and Globe Oil & Refining Co. of McPherson, Kans., met in the final.

"McPherson Oilers" and "Universals" had met twice before. Both times--once in the final of the National A. A. U. championships three weeks ago--Oilers had won easily. Last week overconfident, they let the Universals run up a lead early in the game, depending on their own versatile attack to cut it down. Three times the Oilers almost did so, but early in the second period their star forward, Francis Johnson, was taken out of the game for fouling. Universals, playing inspired basketball, led by Forward Carl Knowles, built up their lead to 44-to-38, with five minutes left to play. Oilers rallied desperately. They narrowed the gap to four points, then three, then one. The whistle blew, with the score 44-to-43 for Universals.

For the Olympic squad of 14, last week's final entitled Universals to name eight players, Oilers five. One more will be chosen from the rest of the teams in the tournament. In some respects, this arrangement seemed eminently suitable. Due to the premium which the game places upon height and reach, basketball squads are often odd looking. By & large the McPherson Oilers are undoubtedly the oddest basketballers in the country.

Their nine-man squad averages 6 ft. 5. Centres Willard Schmidt and Joe Fortenberry are 6 ft. 9 and 6 ft. 8 respectively. When the team travels, they sleep on hotel bedroom floors. They have perfected a technique called "dunking," with which they score by jumping up above the basket, dropping the ball into it. On the defense, they prevent opponents from scoring by batting the ball out of the basket.

That this collection of athletic freaks should be employed by a central Kansas oil concern in a town of 5,000 and that their basketball ramblings should be paid for by the company is less mysterious than it seems. Like Universal Pictures' five, and thousands of similar groups in the U. S., they are a company promotion scheme. The idea came to the Globe Oil's sales manager in 1934, from Gene Johnson who had spent half a dozen years coaching minor college and commercial teams in the Midwest. He guaranteed a winning combination. Last week, Coach Johnson gave his recipe for their success: "We like to turn the game into a wild, helter-skelter, all-over-the-court scuffle . . . because we play bad basketball better than the other fellow. ..."

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