BASKETBALL
Coach Lampe's operatives finished the season a great deal more happily than they started it, but this rousing burst at the tape was still not enough to give them higher than a tie for third place in the final standings. Columbia won the title for the second year in a row, something no team other than Dartmouth has done for, well, as long as we care to remember. The League record of the Green consisted of two wins over Pennsylvania, Harvard, and Yale, and two losses against Princeton (the second by one point), Columbia, and Cornell.
The winter season is currently coming to an end in a flurry of games played in all sports, and space limitations therefore preclude any sort of summary of even the major encounters. The scores may be found at the end of this section. As for the rest (with one exception) we must confine ourselves to generalities.
The team started and ended the season with the same lineup—namely, Eddie Leede and Paul Campbell at forwards, Wes Field at center, and Captain Chip Coleman and Joe Sullivan at guards. The man who saw the most service after this starting five was big Emil Hudak, whose return to his former set-shot accuracy caused him to play almost as much as Joe Sullivan. Indeed, it was the added scoring punch given by Hudak and the vastly improved ability of Wes Field that gave the Green the added drive down the home stretch and enabled them to pull more than one close game out of the fire.
Leading scorer for the Green was Paul Campbell. Ed Leede stayed up with him most of the season, but failed to approach his record-breaking total of the year before. The last few games saw Leede slip somewhat from his high scoring of the early season, which left Campbell to carry the ball almost single-handed. Campbell and Chip Coleman will be lost by graduation this year, the latter after playing four years of Dartmouth basketball (before and after the war) and captaining the team twice. Captain-elect Leede, Field, and Sullivan from the starting five will be back for an other year, with Sullivan expecting to graduate in February, 1949. Hudak is a broth of a boy and only a sophomore, and most of the squad are in their first year of varsity competition. So if experience means anything, next year should be a good one.
All of which leads us to the freshmen quintet, which had an excellent season and is expected to send up several promising candidates to the big time. The starting lineup for Coach Art Young's aggregation included Ed Powers and Howie Bissel at forward, "Stretch" Mulloy at center, and footballer Bob Tyler and Captain Bob Hustek at the guards. All of these men joined in the heavy scoring at one time or another, with Tyler coming up from his guard spot on more than one occasion to take top honors. With his 6'6", "Stretch" Mulloy may give Coach Lampe the big center he has been searching for in vain the past two years. Such a shift would give Wes Field a chance to step into Paul Campbell's forward position, where he (Field) would be more at home.
We may conclude the saga of the 1947-48 basketball team by outlining one of its greatest games, a contest which they ultimately lost, but which threatened to be another Fifth Down upset. I refer to the defeat of Dartmouth by Holy Cross, National NCAA Champion last year, by the score of 67-56. Before a capacity crowd, the Green came out fighting and practically beat the Crusaders' highly talented brains out for most of the first half. At one point in these happy goings-on, Dartmouth was ahead by 25-17, a deficit which the visitors overcame to end up 32-32 at the intermission. In the second half, the unquestioned class of the Crusaders assumed added prominence. They finally spurted away from the game but tiring Green to score 13 points in the last five minutes. Wes Field played his best game of the year, and his 18 points led the Dartmouth scoring, with Campbell and Leede counting 10 and is points respectively. Captain Chip Coleman played a terrific game at guard, in addition to marking up 9 points himself. His banishment in the waning minutes marked the final spurt of Holy Cross who thereby extinguished the last glimmering hopes of the Green. All in all, this was one for the books.
DARTMOUTH'S OLYMPIC HOCKEY CONTRIBUTION: When the Dartmouth All-Stars returned to Hanover on March 12 for a benefit game with the Green varsity, all eight of the Dartmouth puckmen who were chosen for the A.H.A. or A.A.U. Olympic squads were assembled in Davis Rink. In the back row, A.H.A. players, left to right, are Stan Priddy '43, Jack Riley '44, Bruce Cunliffe '47, Bruce Mather '47, and Ralph Warburton '47. A.A.U. players in the front row are Whitey Campbell '46, Joe Riley '49 and George Pulliam '45.
