Basketball
In our last report, the Big Green basketball team, with a record of three victories and one defeat, was ready to embark on its annual Christmas road trip. The journey was a rather disastrous one for the Indians as they dropped four straight games on the road, losing to North Carolina State 96-50, Pittsburgh 67-61, Duquesne 83-55 and Siena 61-54. Actually, Coach Doggie Julian feels, and many of the players share this belief, that Dartmouth should have beaten both Pittsburgh and Siena. The Big Green led during the first part of both of these contests, but for various reasons weakened at the close. One of the main reasons for the Indians' poor showing both on the road and in the games immediately following their return to Hanover was the absence of Paul Wisdom at center. Standing 6'8", Wisdom is the key man in Julian's pivot-type offense and while he is certainly not a top scoring threat, his ball handling and rebounding make him a very valuable man. Wisdom had been plagued with a leg injury during the early part of the season and then, against North Carolina State, he suffered a sprained ankle which kept him out of the Dartmouth lineup until the Holy Cross game on January 13.
In the 13 games played to date (four wins against nine defeats) sophomore guard Glenn Wilson continues to hold top scoring honors with a total of 64 baskets and 31 fouls for 159 points. Only one point behind Wilson with 158 points on 58 field goals and 42 foul shots is Captain Fred Gieg, a forward. Gieg's teammate on the forward line, Art Patterson, has scored an even 100 points on 39 baskets and 32 free throws, and guard Pete Geithner has 98 points on 38 goals and 22 fouls. While the sharp shooting Indians have been doing unusually well in their field goal percentages, averaging well over 35%, the foul shooting has been poor and several close contests have been lost on the foul line.
The Boston College game, which marked Dartmouth's first home appearance, was a good example of this. Both Dartmouth and Boston College played a sloppy ball game, but at halftime the Indians had a 25-18 edge and it was expected they would increase this lead during the remaining periods. However, B.C.'s captain John Silk, who was closely guarded by Pete Geithner, scored 12 fouls during the contest, nine of them during the final half, while sinking only one basket. Next highest scorer for B.C. was Stan Sincoski with four field goals and four fouls for 12 points. But while Silk was scoring 12 out of 16 fouls called on Dartmouth players guarding him, the entire Dartmouth team could account for only nine out of 15 on the foul line and the Indians went down to a 54-51 defeat.
The next home game in January found Dartmouth pitted against Cornell in the first league encounter of the season, and once again, the Indians went down, for their sixth straight loss, by a 76-63 count. Although forward Art Patterson was top scorer for Dartmouth that evening with 16 points, both Cornell guards, Lee Morton and Dave Bradfield, got 18 points 011 pin-point shooting from the outside which Dartmouth found hard to stop. Dartmouth made a close game of it during the first half and at halftime the Big Red was out in front by only one point, 33-32. However, the home forces weakened during the final stanzas and Cornell, taking full advantage of their outside shooting and superior rebounding, pulled away with little difficulty to win the game.
Thus with six defeats in a row behind them, Dartmouth came up against the powerful Holy Cross Crusaders in Alumni Gym on the night of January 13. Exactly four years before the Big Green had upset Holy Cross 50-44, despite Bob Cousy and company, but no one among the 1800 spectators who crowded into the gym had any hopes of history repeating itself on this occasion. Ranked 17th in the nation, the Crusaders boasted such stalwarts as Earl Markey, an Ail-American, and Togo Palazzi, a 17-point-per-game player. Yet when the final buzzer sounded, Coach Julian and his team were carried triumphantly off the floor on the shoulders of cheering students as history did repeat itself and the Big Green defeated Holy Cross 67-61.
The Indians won, not only because they wanted to, but because for once they went all out and performed the way Julian has wanted them to all season. While Art Patterson was scoring 17 points, Glenn Wilson 16 and Captain Fred Gieg 14, the Dartmouth zone defense was throttling the Crusader offense and forcing the Holy Cross team to shoot from outside. Togo Palazzi got his usual 17 points, but Earl Markey collected only 13 and the rest of the Holy Cross team fell way below their average. Another important factor in the victory was the return of Paul Wisdom to the center post. Although Wisdom was used only sparingly his first night back, and made only four points, his rebounding and ball handling could well have provided the margin of victory. The Holy Cross game certainly should not be regarded as an indication of things to come for the Dartmouth basketball team. It did, however, in our opinion, mark a turning point, and more important it restored to the squad a large part of the confidence that had been seeping away.
Despite this added confidence and the return of Wisdom, the Big Green dropped its next two games both league contests to Columbia and Pennsylvania. In the Columbia contest, which was lost 75-65, the Dartmouth zone defense proved unavailing against the set shooting of Jack Molinas and Paul Brandt. Molinas got 21 points and Brandt 20, while Captain Fred Gieg collected 21 for Dartmouth. The Lions' coach, Lou Rossini, assigned George Fickeissen to guarding Glenn Wilson and Fickeissen held Wilson to 8 points for three periods until he fouled out of the game. Wilson's total for the evening was only 13 points and this accounted in large part for the Dartmouth defeat. Here was clearly a contest in which Columbia was superior, and both coaches cleared their benches well before the end of the game.
At Penn, it was the same old story Ernie Beck. The Quakers' All-American forward collected ten baskets and two fouls for a 22-point total to spark Penn to an easy 79-50 win. Beck not only accounted for most of the Penn scoring, but also played a terrific game on rebounds. Fred Gieg was high man for the Indians with 14 points.
FIRST LEAGUE CONTEST: Action under the basket in the Hanover contest with Cornell shows Dartmouth players Fred Gleg (20), Pete Geithner (23), John Parker (16) and Bill Gardner (33).
