TWO BITS WORTH By BILL TOBITT Dr. Forrest C. (Phog) Allen’s learned dissertation on basketball covers more than 400 pages in a four dollar book and it may prove very handy as an almanac—but it. doesn’t rate very highly with Cler- ence Merle Price, coach of the Cali- | fornia basketball team. : Phog, an erudite gentleman, de- | of his livelihood developing Uni- versity of Kansas basketball for- | tunes. He thinks so much of the | sport that he put almost as much effort into writing a book about it as did H. G. Wells in formulating his Outline of History. In fact, the two run parallel, Al- len’s tome talks enthusiastically | about the basketball world. from | birth, through adolescence to its. present state of young manhood. Wells’ opus carries man from pre- historic simplicity to the current complexities. Both are good hand- books for reference purposes. TOO MANY FORMATIONS Where Nibs Price cuts into this picture, though, is in the book’s lavish treatment. of basketball “for- mations.” Allen covers r SOL pages (at one cent per page ing offensive and defensi’ tions in which a team s could be drilled. “That's stretching it qué says Nibs. “If Dr. Allen ne the same amount of space to three or four formations and the funda- | mentals of the game, he’d really have | something every coach could use. ‘ “A young man trying to be a! basketball coach would have just as | easy a time teaching the game out | of that book as I would instructing | rope skipping from a manual on ships’ hawsers. “The game isn’t complicated enough for that. Even you could make up formations. You could do it with your eyes closed by jabbing five dots in a rectangle and calling those dots the positions your players would take. “It’s the fundamentals that count —passing, dribbling and shooting. Look at Stub Allison and what he did with a few plays for his football team. He just taught ’em how to block and tackle and then lined ’em up according to the rules and let "emo," JACKETS SAVE SHIRTS When Nibs Price takes his Cali- fornia basketball team a-tripping around the Nation, come Sunday evening, the boys will be wearing handsome new traveling jackets. They are wondrous to behold. Deep blue, with gold ‘sleeves and waistband and with the word “Bears” in gold script right ACTOSS the heart. “Isn't. that rather an expensive item, Nibs?” we asked... “Yes, but it’s worth it ‘for ‘appear- anccs—and not just for uniformity and color alone. “Last year on our hercstdbininay tour the boys thought they’d save on their laundry bills, so they went without shirts beneath their pullover sweaters. Not at all becoming to gentlemen of California. “Now they can go without their shirts and nobody will be the wiser. A zipper runs from their belt buckles to their chins.”