No Shuffle,
But Sooners”
_ Stack Buffs

‘BY DON PIERCE .
- Special ‘Correspondent:
ANSAS CITY.—Almost as
. strange as Oklahoma’s
upset victory over Colorado in
the 1954. Big Seven tourna-
ment eurtain-raiser here was
the fact that, the Sooners
brought off ‘thes upset without
ed shuffle.
iis invented by
Bruce Drake hp
featuring =
had become
* ball trade mark. There was no
. gemblence of it in that 73-71
toppling of the Buffaloes,
heaviest favorite in the four
first-round contests. |
“I changed for a couple of
reasons,” Drake explained in
the center. of his vibrating
_ dressing room, Our opponents
- ground the league have been
laying awake nights devising
- @efenses for it.
“Wact is, at least three
teams, Colorado, Kansas and
Kansas State, have added
some phases of it to their own
offense. Some of our oppon-«
. ents’ freshmen know it as well
as we do,

“THEN, TOO, we must have
~ an offense that gives our best |
scorers. the best chances to
score. AS everyone knows
we're long on guard strength
and short at the other three
_ positions. I’ve changed the
_ system to fit the material.”
' Drake would not be drawn
into the technicalities of his
new offense other than to say
. —‘We key off the defense. We
try to counter the moves of
the defense with some varia- |
tion, ©
Against. CU the two guards, |
‘ .veteran Lester Lane, playing in
his. fourth tournament, and |
, sophomore Jimmy Peck, a mere |
5-9 midget, screened laterally |
for one another off the backline |
trying to shake loose the drib- |
bler around the perimeter of |
the defense for running one- |
handers.
This pair also frequently hit
_ the post then took a return
~ pass to pop from behind a for-
_ ward screen near the corners,
_. They free-lanced down the mid-
_ dle considerably, too, shredding
' the lethargic Buffs badly thru
. the first half simply off a di-'
, gonal .dribble thru: the key-
: hole.
|. “We have got to have better
shots than the. other team,”
'.. Drake pointed out, “because we |
‘ can’t fight on even terms: off
the boards.”
~The herd grabbed 17 more |
pneu than did OU, at 55-38,