Crusaders Top Basketball Team, 79-66

WORCESTER--Holy Cross may be one of the best basketball teams in the country, but the Crusaders will have to do better than they did Saturday night at Worcester to prove it.

Or you can look at it another way: Harvard may be one of the worst teams in the Ivy League, but the Crimson will have to play much worse than it did Saturday to maintain that reputation.

As expected, the varsity bowed to Holy Cross, but the margin was hardly embarrassing. The Crusaders trailed for 17 minutes and needed a strong second-half surge to get their 79 to 66 victory. Jack "The Shot" Foley was mildly impressive for Holy Cross, tallying 17 points, but the Cross would never have won without the hard-driving play of co-captain and guard Tim Shea.

Shea, a 6 St. huslter, led both teams in scoring with 20 points, most of which came on long jump shots. He also excelled on defense and at playmaking, and harried the varsity for the full 40 minutes.

Jack the Shot, the darling of the local rooters who packed Worcester Memorial Auditorium, was fairly cold, although he did rack up 14 points in the first half. When he finally sank one of his fabled shots after 6:35, the fans practically tore the place apart. The same spectators ignored another hometown boy, Crimson captain Bob Bowditch--with some reason, Bowditch couldn't buy a basket, but he did contribute the best defensive efforts of the night, pulling several steals and blocking his usual number of shots.

The assembled throng could rave, and will undoubtedly as the season progresses, about forward John Connors, who specialized in backward, over-the-shoulder layups, and center Dave Slattery, a 6 ft., 3 in. operative with a deadly eye and a knack for un-center-like dribbling.

Ravenous Crowd

Still, Holy Cross was something less than overpowering on its opening night. The Crimson, however, acquitted itself very well in front of a ravenous crowd and against a team that supposedly far outclassed it.

With Denny Lynch, Gary Borchard and Joe Deering leading the charge, the varsity went ahead at the start. Holy Cross tied the count at 14-14 after 9:40 on an upside-down drive by Connors, but good defense by Bowditch and Bill Danner produced several fast-break opportunities. Lynch's long set gave the varsity a five-point lead, 25 to 20, after about 15 minutes, but the Crusaders put on a full-court press and caught up with 3:05 left in the half.

By halftime, the Crusaders had a six-point margin, 36 to 30, and they padded their lead in the final 20 minutes. The varsity was never closer than six points in the second half.

Execrable Officials

In the first half, the Crimson was hampered by execrable officiating, notably by one Milton C. Fidgeon. By the time the score was 5 to 3, Lynch had three fouls on him, and the two officials could not get together on what was charging and what wasn't. After the intermission, the referees bugged both coaches equally; at one point, even the Crimson's phlegmatic Phloyd Wilson got up off the bench, and at another, both officials had to console Holy Cross mentor Roy Leenig.

Borchard and Deering, with 14 points each, paced the Crimson. Danner, in his finest game as a varsity player, tallied 13. Sophomores Lynch and Pete Kelley each added nine points, and Kelley led all rebounders with 16. Borchard was second on the varsity with 11 rebounds.

The Crimson was licked by its poor foul shooting. The team made only 16 out of 29, by unofficial count, and the missed shots were H.C.'s eventual margin of victory. Borchard missed four out of eight, Kelley four out of seven, and Deering two out of four. Lynch, on the other hand, was three for three from the foul line.

Thus the Crimson now has a 1-1 record, which is one game better than a lot of people expected the slate to be at this point. Wilson could have the makings of a very good basektball team.