Double-Take Team

In Madison Square Garden last week the St. John's basketball team did everything wrong but shoot at its own basket. For a topflight team, their ball handling was wretched, their close-in shooting slovenly. With 45 seconds to play and St. John's three points behind, all that Utah had to do to score an upset victory was to freeze the ball until time ran out. Then prosperity went to Utah's head.

Instead of freezing the ball, a Utah player tried for an easy lay-up shot. He missed. St. John's recovered the ball, and before 18,000 fans realized what was happening, the score was tied. St. John's won in overtime, 51-50. Later, when his hands stopped clenching and unclenching, St. John's sandy-haired Coach Frank McGuire was asked by sportwriters to explain how his off-again-on-again boys had gone undefeated through eleven straight games and become the nation's No. i college team.-Said McGuire, who has coached at Roman Catholic St. John's University for three years, "I don't know why they're winning myself. It must be the Blessed Mother."

Free-Hour Throws. St. John's, a team without an outstanding star, has no set style of play. McGuire likes to say that there is no such thing as a guard or forward on his team: "When we've got the ball, I've got five forwards. When they've got it, I've got five guards." What St. John's does have is a deep-seated enthusiasm for basketball that flows through its 7,600 students as the football fever does at Notre Dame.

St. John's, 79 years old and resident of a cramped little campus in Brooklyn's Stuyvesant Heights district, abandoned football 17 years ago. That left basketball to concentrate on, and on it St. John's concentrated. When the varsity is not practicing, De Gray Gymnasium is usually busy with intramural games, or with free-hour students just throwing balls through the hoops.

This season, not even the loyal St. John's student body gave the team much chance to survive its schedule. But after five warm-up games in Brooklyn, St. John's moved across the river to Madison Square Garden and plastered Louisiana State, 80-49. Big (6 ft. 6 in.) Sophomore Center Zeke Zawoluk picked basketballs off the backboards and Gerry Calabrese peppered the basket with deadly accuracy from the "outside." Unlike most Midwestern teams, which specialize in the fast break, St. John's has a collection of set-shot artists who do not weave in unless they feel frisky.

Buried Champions. After slowing fast-breaking Rhode Island State down to a walk (75-54), St. John's jolted once-mighty Kentucky (69-58) and then Washington State's up-&-coming two-platoon team (67-44). Despite this impressive start, there was still some doubt that St. John's was even the best team in New York City. That title had been reserved for its archrival, City College (C.C.N.Y.).

But a fortnight ago St. John's took the floor against the flashy University of San Francisco, last year's National Invitation Tournament champions. Coach McGuire called for a tight zone defense of the St. John's basket. "Collapse around the keyhole," was his way of putting it. He knew that San Francisco was no great shakes at scoring from outside. When McGuire's men thereupon buried San Francisco, 60-44, the experts did a doubletake, finally began to admit that they were pretty good.

Just how good would be decided this week when unbeaten St. John's met strong, twice-beaten C.C.N.Y.

* -According to Handicapper Dick Dunkel, whose ratings are published in U.S. newspapers. Runners-up: Minnesota, Holy Cross, Cincinnati, La Salle.

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