Last Basket

As a step towards an eventual "world's series" for a sport which at present has no national championship, the Metropolitan Basketball Writers' Association is holding this week an intercollegiate invitation basketball tournament in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden. Not represented in this tournament, however, are the following outstanding sectional teams of the U. S., all of whom had completed their schedules by last week:

P:North Carolina, which, with 13 victories, two losses, led the Southern Conference until in the first round of a post-season tournament in Raleigh its team was put out by Washington & Lee. Duke won that tournament, is thus technically rated champion.

P:Purdue, winner of the Western Conference (Big Ten).

P:Dartmouth, winner of the Eastern Intercollegiate Conference.

P:Stanford, winner of the Pacific Coast Conference. As champion of the Southern Division, Stanford last week met the Northern Division titleholder, Oregon, in a two-out-of-three-game play-off in San Francisco. It was San Francisco's first chance this season to see in action its native son, Stanford's phenomenal Angelo Henry ("Hank") Luisetti (TIME, Jan. 24). When Stanford completed its schedule last fortnight, Basketballer Luisetti in four years of play had scored 1,550 points--19 more than the previous all-time record, set in 1935 by Glen Roberts of Emory and Henry College.

In the first game of the playoff, staged in San Francisco's Civic Auditorium, a slippery floor confused both teams. With Luisetti as high man scoring 20 points, Stanford won, 52-to-39. In the second game, played in Stanford's small Pavilion ("Cracker Box"), Luisetti's teammates began feeding him shots in the hope of bringing his scoring record to 1,600. Though Stanford again won, 59-to-51, he and they failed--by four points.

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