With Big Green Teams
Hockey Extends Undefeated Record Through Fourth Year, Basketball Gives Up League Reign, as Winter Season Ends
ALL GOOD THINGS, to coin a phrase, must come to an end. This time it was the unprecedented succession of basketball championships the big Green has enjoyed in the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League. With the last game against Cornell (which Dartmouth lost by the decisive margin of 50-35), there ended the first winter season in two college generations when Dartmouth was not at the top of Ivy League basketball and up near the top in the national picture. Out of a total of 14 games played this year, we lost more (eight) than we won (six) for the first time in a long time. The league record was 2 wins and 4 defeats in a league consisting of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Columbia, and ourselves. All in all, it was not a particularly inspiring picture. With the capable Ossie Cowles at the helm, however, and with postwar prospects as bright as ever, conditions could not be other than fundamentally sound. As in football, this just wasn't our year.
The final game of the season against Cornell was no more satisfactory than the first one we played with them in Hanover, which is outlined below. The size and skill of the Big Red team were too much for the boys in Green, although Ed Leede with 14 points did his usual best to avert the debacle. Little Mac Simpson was the second high scorer for Dartmouth with 8 points, but the rest of the team could produce no more than 13 points between them, while failing at the same time to hold Cornell within reasonable bounds. Although Dartmouth started off with a bang to lead at the end of the first seven minutes by the score of 9-6, Cornell quickly forged to the front and led at the half by the margin of 32-16. We played the towering Red team almost even during the second half, but this was insufficient to overcome the initial deficit. In this respect, both Cornell games were strikingly similar too much in the first half for Cornell; too little and too late for Dartmouth in the second.
The first visit of the Big Red team to Hanover this winter was also an unqualified success for the opposition. Using their great height to constant advantage, Cornell swamped Coach Cowles proteges by the one-sided score of 46-28. The first half of this contest was, from the Dartmouth point of view, one of the grimmest combinations of futility and misfortune seen on the local floor in years. The reason for this statement will be apparent when it is pointed out that, in the entire first half, Dartmouth managed to score a grand total of 5 points, amassed from three free throws and one basket. Cornell, meanwhile, was running up a respectable half-time total of 23 points, which left the Green trailing by a hopeless margin when the second half began. In this stanza, Dartmouth came to life with a vengeance and matched the Cornell scoring point for point. These heroic efforts were, however, obviously insufficient to win the game and the contest ended with the same 18 point differential between the teams that existed after the initial period.
Cornell fielded one of the biggest teams seen in years. The first team averaged a mere six feet three inches, while the center went up to the imposing height of six feet nine. Against this towering aggregation, most of the local boys looked physically like grade schoolers who had wandered on to the floor by mistake in the middle of an ordinary college game. Cornell was thus able to assert complete mastery over the backboards, an advantage which was particularly evident during the first half.
In one of the wildest encounters seen on the local court in years, the league-leading Pennsylvania quintet next avenged its early season defeat at the hands of Dartmouth by easing through to a precarious 4i:39 victory over a fighting Green aggregation. In a photo-finish which had the customers screaming in the aisles, Penn first tied the score at 39 all with approximately 2 minutes to go, then sank what proved to be the winning basket with time fast running out. With the second hand racing toward the final barrier, Ed Leede then came through with a beautiful set shot from the corner of the court, which had the partisan crowd beating each other over the head in sheer ecstasy. But one of the perverse little characters who kept blowing his whistle all afternoon had a different idea about this basket which apparently sent the game into overtime. The dull and unimaginative thing for him to do would have been to call a foul against Dartmouth and give Penn a possible victory by three points. But this little man with the whistle was anything if not imaginative. So he called a foul against Penn, which would have used up all the remaining time, nullified the apparently tying basket, and assured Penn of a more artistic one point triumph. Captain Ed Leede did the only thing he could do under the circumstances, namely, refuse the foul and take a chance on another basket. This strategy failed when Penn intercepted the pass-out and broke up the play. And that was the ball game.
This was not the same listless and generally unsuccessful team which had lost to Cornell the week before. The Green was in there pitching all afternoon and jumped into what seemed to be a commanding lead early in the encounter. The little man with the whistle soon began to go to work, however, and Penn piled up a tremendous total of free throws which ultimately won the game for them. Dartmouth outscored Penn from the floor, with a ratio of 15 to 12 baskets, the pay-off coming in the disparity between the 17 points which Penn converted from the free throw line and the 9 which Dartmouth was able to produce. Ed Leede and Ralph DiStefani were the leading Dartmouth scorers with 12 points apiece in this gallant but ultimately futile struggle. This was one of those games, however, in which everyone got their money's worth. Including the little man with the whistle.
On the following Wednesday evening (January 31), Dartmouth defeated Columbia in a contest whose acrimony exceeded the ordinary standards in such encounters. The score was 45-38 and this represented the first League game the Indians had won since their initial victory over Penn which opened the season. The game was featured by vehement guarding on both sides, with the Columbia man-to-man defense practically ending up in the hair of the local players. Dartmouth led throughout the game, but was never sufficiently out in front to allow the spectators to settle back in their seats and talk about the weather.
Ed Leede, as usual, led the scoring for Dartmouth, but even his stellar work on the court and his 19 points were eclipsed by the play of a diminutive dynamo by the name of Simpson, who combined 18 points with a superlative job of guarding and floor play. This little character has been getting better and better with every game since Coach Cowles plucked him out of the limbo of intramural basketball and deposited him on the first team. Only 5 feet 6, in a game where height counts for a great deal, this sturdy little fellow has been sparking the defense for several games and hitting the cords with long set shots with increasing and gratifying frequency.
Before a crowded house of students, trainees, and guests (I started to say a Carnival crowd, but hastily checked myself), Dartmouth defeated Holy Cross by the decisive margin of 59-46. This game was noteworthy for the distribution of the scoring, with every one of the starting five contributing liberally to the tally sheet, in striking contrast to many recent games in which the Dartmouth scoring has been done almost exclusively by one or two men, with the rest of the group merely in the role of a supporting cast. Bildner at right forward contributed 12 points, Ed Leede at left forward was second high man with 13, while DiStefani led the scoring for Dartmouth with 14 points. Bob Harvey at center made 4 points, while the two guards Simpson and Falkin came through with 8 and 7 points respectively. All in all, it was a very satisfactory indication of a balanced strength which has been conspicuous by its absence in all too many encounters this season.
POINTING TO NO. 47 NEXT YEAR? Coach "Hafey" Arthur, whose Green sextet ran Dartmouth's four- year hockey record to 46 games without defeat, has found something to point out to three of the top men on this year's team: (left to right) Ralph Warburton (Navy), Bruce Cunliffe (Marine), Charlie Holt '45 (Navy).
