How many ambushes await favorites in the eight annual Big
Seven basketball tournament which gets out of the starting gate
Saturday in Kansas City's Municipal auditorium? What odd outcrop-
pings of team performance and bizarre player incidents will mark
the affair?

Those are the magnates that again will draw sellout houses
in the 10,000-capacity roundball palace at least three of the
four playing nights and continue to project the affair as one of
the nation's finest, despite its comparatively youthful existence,

This is the meet that already has produced two high-scoring
overtime matches without precident in regular league play, Kansas!
90-88 win over Kansas State in the 1951 semifinals and Stanford's
103-102 edging of Iowa State in the first consolation round of
the same meet.

This is a tournament in which Iowa State, a team that hasn't
won a league cage flag since 1945 and has dropped 13 consecutive
conference decisions to Kansas State, is the only club which holds
an edge over the Wildcats in tourney play. It is only 1-0, the
Cyclones having captured the only match between the two. But
State is 0-7 against a combination of Missouri and Kansas while
State holds a bulge over all other comers.

The meet also has seen a stellar performer like Missouri's
Win Wilfong blanked from the field for a full game. And it once
produced an all-tournament team, the 199 five, that did not ine
clude a single member of Missouri's championship five.

Also consider these rare facts: Only postemen ever have won
a meet individual scoring championship. Yet none holds the single-
game point record. Three men, Oklahoma's Sherman Norton, the re-

cord-holder with 39; Minnesota's Maynard Johnson and Kansas State's