Hot Rod Cools Off

Elsewhere, the world was moving out of doors. But from Corvallis, Ore., to Philadelphia, Pa., gymnasiums still echoed to the dull thwack of basketballs bouncing off backboards. Some time before the school year ends, the outsize collegians on the topflight U.S. basketball teams will have to buckle down to their homework, but this week they will be mainly occupied with somewhat less academic matters: the N.C.A.A. and the National Invitation tournaments.

Under way first, the N.C.A.A. tournament picked up momentum as the University of San Francisco's defensive experts (TIME, Feb. 14) uncorked a high-scoring punch and flattened West Texas State 89-66. In the next round the Dons beat Utah 83-71. In the East, at Manhattan's Madison Square Garden, La Salle College's defending champions set a new tournament record as they smothered West Virginia 95-61 under a hail of last-half baskets.

Into the Stands. For La Salle, winning was not as simple as the score suggested. All through the first period, while All-America Tom Gola and his teammates tried to get untracked, a tall (6 ft. 4 in., 185 lbs.), poker-faced playboy of a Mountaineer named Rodney ("Hot Rod") Hundley ran wild. On the La Salle bench, Coach Ken Loeffler screamed himself into a purple fury as he watched Hot Rod bamboozle the champs with unpredictable shots from impossible angles.

It was the kind of playing that can change collegiate basketball from a foul-ridden melee into the exciting spectacle that it was meant to be. Only the week before, the crewcut youngster (20) had boosted the Mountaineers into the N.C.A.A. playoffs by beating George Washington University almost singlehanded. In a tense overtime period, Hot Rod had really turned it on. He fired a foul shot--and sank it--from behind his back. With time running out, he stood there, calmly chomping on his bubble gum while he twirled the ball on the tip of his banana-broad fingers. When two G.W. defenders moved in on him, he rolled the basketball down his back and flipped away an accurate left-handed pass. Driven to distraction, one G.W. player waited impatiently till he got his hands on the ball, then hurled it into the stands.

Carefree Clown. In the New York game La Salle's Coach Loeffler was determined to keep Hot Rod from repeating that kind of performance. In the second period calmed-down Loeffler ordered his team to switch to a zone defense. It was the first time a single opponent had ever forced Loeffler's hand, but it was a wise move. Hot Rod and his Mountaineers were slowed to a walk; Gola and La Salle ran off with the game.

Moving smoothly now, La Salle went back to Philadelphia, where the Explorers trounced Princeton's Ivy League champions 73-46, toyed with Canisius, 99-64, and raised their own tournament record before they took off for the final rounds in Kansas City.

Temporarily cooled off, Rod Hundley, the sophomore Hot Rod, went home to the hills of West Virginia. But for a little while he had been up in the big time. Fans hoped that his kind of carefree clowning might some day be a permanent fixture of collegiate basketball.

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