Basketball

The basketball team wound up its season on a happy note by stunning Cornell at Ithaca, 72 to 65, in what was the best team performance of the winter (see below). After the way the Big Red had toyed with the Green at Hanover, 57 to 41, it looked as though Dartmouth would lose this one too, but Coach Julian's boys caught fire and by their victory gave the whole season a lift.

The Green's final league record was four won and eight lost, which put it in a tie with Yale for fifth place. The overall record for the season was 11 won and 19 lost. This is better than the 3 and 23 record of last year, but is still far short of the grandeur that was the Green's in the palmy days of Gus Broberg and his talented con temporaries.

The team that Dartmouth fielded this winter has been a fighting aggregation, and one which only lacked another consistent scorer to make it a topflite aggregation. Big Freddy Gieg has been the high scorer in practically every game, and he ranks among the first half dozen in the Ivy League, with a game average in the neighborhood of 15 points. Billy Biggs has been close behind him and is the only other man on the team who scored consistently in two figures. The two centers, Len Hedberg and Paul Wisdom, both had their good nights (with Hedberg notably talented in his farewell performance against Columbia), but neither was up to the demanding specifications of centers in this era of high-pressure and high-scoring pivot men.

Captain Calhoun at guard was one of the most inspiring leaders any varsity team has had in years, and his guarding and floor game were both well above standard. He was, however, not a scorer, which was the same difficulty experienced by Roger Pierce, the other starting guard. With one more man who could hit in two figures, this team would have been right up there in the Ivy League. The boys fought right up to the closing buzzer every game, and, in their final home week, almost beat the New England champs from Holy Cross (47-40) and powerful Columbia, last year's Ivy League champions. In neither game, however, did the Green quite have the final punch.

Columbia 58, Dartmouth 55. In their final home game, the boys played highly favored Columbia, who had previously polished off Coach Julian's operatives in New York by go points. Dartmouth was in the contest right down to the wire and lost only in the closing minutes, after leading most of the game. This was the final appearance for Captain Kent Calhoun, Billy Biggs, Len Hedberg, Roger Pierce, Zack Boyages, and Dick O'Neill. The departure of this group means that the entire starting lineup, with the exception of Freddy Gieg, is wiped out by graduation. The boys wanted to win this one for a number of reasons—for Dartmouth, for Doggie Julian, and for themselves. They led at the half (25-24) and at the three-quarter mark (4238). But Columbia came through in the closing stanza to win by an extremely close margin, successfully employing a freeze in the last couple of minutes to do it.

This was, as noted, the last game for Len Hedberg and it was perhaps the best one of his varsity career. Forced to play the entire contest at the pivot spot because of an injury to Paul Wisdom, Hedberg held the talented Jack Molinas of Columbia to a single field goal in the first 20 minutes and to only 14 points for the evening. Hedberg himself scored 16 points to lead the Green.

Dartmouth 72, Cornell 65. This is definitely a stop-press item. In their final game of the season, in which everyone (including this correspondent) had counted them out, Coach Doggie Julian's charges erupted in the second half and practically ran a bewildered Cornell team off their own floor and into the waters of you-know-what. For the first half, the Green appeared to be merely playing out the schedule, and Cornell was coasting along with a comfortable 16-point lead (41-25) as the third quarter opened. All of a sudden, Dartmouth came to life, scored a phenomenal 29 points in the third quarter, and went on to win in the final period before a stunned Cornell audience. In the first half, Dartmouth made a meager 25 per cent of their shots from the floor; in the second half, they made 58 per cent, for a total of 47 points in the final two periods.

This was far and away the best team performance of the Green for the year, with five men scoring in double figures for the first and only time this season. Little Zack Boyages was the leading scorer with 17 points, followed by Fred Gieg with 16, Len Hedberg with 14, Billy Biggs with 11, and Roger Pierce (who played the best game of his career) with 10. All in all, this was a most gratifying way to end a season that had more than its share of frustrations. The boys who played their last game for Dartmouth will always remember it.

NEW BASEBALL COACH TAKES OVER: Bob Showkey, former New York Yankee star who arrived in Hanover early last month to direct Dartmouth's baseball fortunes, is shown in Davis Field House with Captain Jim Churchill '52, who will lead the Big Green nine from an outfield position.