Beaten Once But Far From Out

All year long the tedious refrain had echoed across the country, spoken over and over by a thousand basketball coaches—each time with an air of discovery. "Lew Alcindor puts his pants on one leg at a time." Now there were only 15 speakers: the optimists directing the remaining teams in the NCAA basketball tournament, all of them silly enough to think they can beat Lew Alcindor and UCLA. Imagine beating UCLA! Why, you have to go all the way crosstown in Los Angeles to find people who can do things like that.

Actually, crosstown came to UCLA last Saturday night in the guise of the University of Southern California, a school that is always good in everything but basketball. The meek (15-11) Trojans, who just the night before had lost in double overtime to the Bruins, froze the pants off UCLA and Alcindor—both legs at once—and beat them in the final Pacific Eight game of the year. The upset ended a home-court winning streak at 85 and was only the fourth defeat for an Alcindor team in eight years of high school and college. UCLA and its agile 7'1½" center are still favorites to win their third straight championship—something no school has ever done—but never underestimate the power of a cliché. Lew Alcindor's britches may have shrunk a little. If they have, the 1969 tournament will become one of the most exciting since the whole thing started back in 1939.

Right now college basketball could use a spate of hard, clean competition, if for no other reason than to blow away the nasty odors from the regular college season, which was enriched by such events as All-America Spencer Haywood hitting a referee, Texas A & M fans working over a Baylor player while he was lying on the floor and the president of Morehead State University stalking onto the court to berate an official. Brave partisans in Philadelphia's Palestra have thrown cans of beer and a whiskey bottle, bananas have been thrown in Colorado State's arena, turkey eggs at Texas Tech and ice cubes at Mississippi State. Most of the fighting, of course, has been among the players, but the Cal and Stanford pep bands had a free-for-all, and even two mascots, students costumed as St. Joseph's Hawk and Villanova's Wildcat, went at it, Mr. Wildcat using his tail as a whip.

The NCAA semifinals and finals will be March 20 and 22 in Louisville, the same town where a spectator known as Big Cigar joined in a January player brawl and was justly rewarded with broken glasses and a bruised nose. Hopefully, all concerned will keep their fists and tails to themselves this time and Alcindor can play his last games as a collegian in relative peace before being offered the commissionership, his own franchise and keys to the vault by one or the other of the pro leagues.

The tournament format has been changed slightly. This week's regional games (see chart, right) will be held Thursday night and Saturday afternoon to accommodate television and the coaches, who wanted a day off to prepare their squads. The schedule next week in Louisville's Freedom Hall will be the same.

The championship game most likely will be between UCLA and North Carolina for the second straight year, although the tall Tar Heels must fight (and we do not mean that literally) their way through the toughest of the four regional (Duquesne, Davidson and St. John's) and then beat the Mideast champion, probably Purdue but maybe Kentucky. UCLA must get by New Mexico State and once-beaten Santa Clara, no cinch, but the West Regional is in the Bruins' own Pauley Pavilion, which, now that the pressure of a 41-game winning streak is off the team, should again become the redoubt it has always been.

If Kentucky gets into the final game against UCLA the Bruins will face an additional hazard, because the folks in Louisville love Baron Adolph Rupp and will be screaming their pickled-in-bourbon tonsils out for his Wildcats. There is further drama in a Kentucky-UCLA pairing: both UCLA Coach John Wooden and Rupp are aiming for a record fifth national championship.

"I'll be very honest about it," says Rupp. "I don't think we have the bench to go all the way in the NCAA. Our bench is practically all sophomore and we'll just have to go into the tournament with our five starters and two reserves, and in a national tournament that just isn't enough bench."

Yet in 1958 a lightly regarded Kentucky team made it to Louisville, and in the finals faced a hero almost as devastating as Alcindor, Elgin Baylor of Seattle. Baylor got in foul trouble early and Rupp's Fiddlin' Five won.

The Wildcats have to ease by Marquette and Purdue at Madison to get back to the bluegrass. Marquette, which trounced Murray State by 20 points to earn the shot at Kentucky, has the advantage of playing in its home state (although Coach Al McGuire's best players are from New York City). The Warriors have no starter taller than 6'5", but they are such great leapers that Kentucky Center Dan Issel will have a battle on the boards anyway. He should win, as he has been doing all year, perhaps because he is so scary to look at without his front teeth. Running around the gym as an eighth-grader, he tripped over his own big feet and fell flat on his face. He does not trip anymore, and Guard Mike Casey, who was the team hotshot when they were both freshmen and sophomores, unselfishly feeds Issel and still gets plenty of points himself.