BASKETBALL
The last portion of the basketball season saw Coach Elmer Lampe's squad rebound after eight league losses to spring a pair of notable surprises. The first of these conquests came in New York, with Columbia the unhappy victim. The Dartmouth team had dropped a heartbreaking 50-48 decision to the Lions in Hanover earlier in the season and this defeat rankled. So the Indians took it out on Columbia to the tune of 48-39 in the rematch and the Dartmouth victory knocked Columbia out of first place in the Eastern Intercollegiate League. The second particularly pleasant basketball experience came in the season's finale against Cornell. Playing their best game of the year, the Indians ran up a 20 point lead early in the second half and coasted to a 57-45 triumph over the Big Red.
Captain Eddie Leede played the last game of his brilliant college career against Cornell and bowed out with a spectacular 24-point performance. His splurge at the Ithacans' expense gave him 415 points for the season. This is a new Dartmouth record for one season's play, bettering George Munroe's 382 points scored in 1941-42. In becoming the first man in Dartmouth his tory to tally over 400 points in a single year, Leede added one more mark to the host of College scoring records he already held. He is the only Dartmouth player ever to score 30 or more points in a single game and he turned this trick, three times. His 34 points against Harvard in Boston are tops for an Indian player away from home and his 31 against Harvard two years ago is the record for the Dartmouth floor. His 1347 points is high for any Dartmouth player over a career span and his 192 points in league play this season is another Big Green record. Leede scored ten points or better 68 times in his college career and hit for 20 or better 21 times .... a truly remarkable record. Although he never had the good luck to play on an outstanding team, his inspiring play puts him in the select company of such Indian greats as Bonniwell, Thomas, Broberg, Munroe, Olson, Pearson, Brindley, Myers and other Dartmouth standouts of the past.
Due largely to Leede and juniors Emil Hudak, Wes Field and Red Rowe, Dartmouth 'finished the season with 15 victories and 11 losses. Included among the Indian victims were such teams as Boston College, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Holy Cross, Army, Columbia, Cornell and Harvard. League teams proved to be the hardest nut for the Big Green. A pair of triumphs over Harvard and single victories over Columbia and Cornell were all that Dartmouth could win against conference opposition. But with a little more luck Dartmouth would have beaten Penn, Columbia and Princeton at home and Cornell away. All of these games were tense contests that barely eluded the Indians.
Behind Leede in the individual scoring totals was Emil Hudak with 271 points. The husky Dartmouth guard, who is also a star pitcher on the baseball team, scored most of his points on long set shots and had the highest foul-shooting percentage on the team. In fact, Hudak scored 59 free throws in 78 attempts for a .756 percentage .... one of the nation's best. Following Hudak was Wes Field, with 219 points; Red Rowe, who came fast toward the season's end to finish with 175 tallies, and Dick Buckley with 149. Showing great improvement were sophomores Jim Ballard, Bobby Hustek and Warren Mulloy, who was forced to miss the last half of the season because of an appendectomy. With some help from this year's freshman crew, Dartmouth should field an improved club next season. Captain Leede will be the only departing member of the team, but losing a player like Leede is a blow of the first water. The Dartmouth leader will make his last collegiate appearance in the East-West All-Star game in Madison Square Garden April 2.
