Basketball

The long-awaited trip of the Dartmouth varsity basketball team to the West Coast and Midwest over the Christmas holidays proved rather discouraging as the Indians won a single game and lost five. The Big Green started off well by defeating Southern California, 61-57, but then dropped a heart-breaker to Stanford at the San Francisco Cow Palace, 56-55. The Indians had the ball with ten seconds to go but could not score. A return game with Southern California proved disastrous as the tables were turned on the Big Green, 68-50. In a Christmas Eve game Dartmouth went down to defeat again as it lost to a powerful California team, 78-59. The Midwest proved equally inhospitable with Northwestern dropping the Indians, 74-60, and Bradley pinning an 80-74 defeat on them in one of the hardest fought games of the trip. Minor injuries to guard Gene Booth and reserve center Jim Preston forced both players to miss the final game.

Returning to Hanover, the Big Green looked with renewed hope to the Ivy League for a few wins, but a two-day trip to Pennsylvania and Princeton proved the end was not in sight as Dartmouth lost a close 69-66 game to the Quakers and then were dumped by the Tigers, 90-82. Dartmouth's first triumph of the Ivy season came on January 10 as it downed Harvard, 71-58, but four nights later in Hanover, Princeton came from behind to defeat the Big Green, 59-57, and push the Indians far down in the Ivy League race.

Dartmouth's overall record shows six wins and eight defeats, while in Ivy League play the Indians have three defeats against one victory. This is reason enough for Coach Doggie Julian to be crying the blues but oddly enough he is remaining comparatively calm.

"We've lost more than our share of the tough ones/' says Doggie, "but the boys are playing well and we're not out of the picture yet." He points to the team shooting average of .339, the free-throw average of .710, and the 63.3-points-per-game average as proof that the Big Green is holding its own on the court.

Top scorer for the Indians continues to be veteran center Jim Francis, who is hitting at a 14.9-points-per-game clip, while forward Ron Judson has an 11.2 average and sophomore forward Dave Carruthers a 9.5 average. Reserve guard Herb Markman has proved surprisingly strong in recent games, posting an 11.0 average in four contests.

Guard Larry Blades, another veteran, and Ron Fraser, who plays at both center and forward, are averaging five points for each contest along with veteran forward Tom Donahoe. Captain Toby Julian, a guard, is just below this five-point average, while guard Gene Booth's scoring has fallen below four points for each game.

The two recent games with Princeton and some of the games on the road trip seem to indicate that the Indians have a tendency to run down in the final periods of play. This, coupled with a lack of overall speed on the squad, may account for the losses to date, although the Dartmouth defense still seems very strong. Most observers are inclined to feel that the Indians were slightly over-rated at the start of the season and that it takes time to build a strong team when you combine sophomores with more experienced players. However, a wait-and-see attitude has developed and the general belief is that the Big Green basketball team will do better in the remaining games.

The Dartmouth-California game, on TV for West Coast viewers, was snapped at home by Bill Gahagean '35. Francis is shooting.