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OKLAHOMA A,& M OOACH OFFERS FOOD FOR THOUGHT
By Joseph M, Sheehan

NEW YORK TIMES, Dec, 17, 1940.....

Basketball's oratorical season opened with a flourish -~ and on an entirely
new note -= at the initial speech-making session of the Metropolitan Basketball
Writers at the Hotel Iincoln yesterday, The local coaches eschewed pleasantries
and dispensed solid information for once, while a visitor, Henry Iba, of Oklaho-
ma A, and M, suvplied fireworks with a novel twist,

With refreshing frankness, the man whose team took the measure of City
College's touted quintet last Saturday night told the scribes and his conferes
that the men who teach basketball throughout the country were placing the future
of the sport in jeovardy by unreasonable and uncalled-for "beefing" following a
defeat,

"Basketball is too fine a game to be ruined by insignificant alibies,"
Tba declared, "Too often a losing coach places the blame on traveling condi-
‘tions, smoke-filled arenas, sectional rules interpretations, officiating and
what-not. We coaches should take hold of ourselves, concentrate on teaching
what we know to our boys and forget about the alibies, They mean nothing and
are certain to hurt the game,"

If Iba had any one in particular in mind, he kept his thoughts well guar-
ded, However, there is much to his thesis, At the same time the mentor of the
Aggies emphasized the increasing difficulties of coaching on the major circuit,
"We are up against the same problem as the football coaches had to face four
years ago when the five-man defensive line came into general use," Iba said,

"We've run into seven different defenses in the last two years," he con-
tinued, "They're #11 variations of the zone and man-to-man, but each has to be
met by different offensive tactics, It's getting so that basketball is the hard
est course a boy takes in college and a coach has to devote more time to mapping
a practice than a professor does in planning a lecture,"

These last remarks by Iba agreed perfectly with an independent contribu-
tion, received by this devartment in yesterday's mail and herewith acknowledged,
entitled "A Selected Bibliography on Basketball", compiled by Nat Holman, Assis-
tant Professor, Department of Hygiene and Director of Basketball, the City dol-
lege of New York,"

This formidable mimeographed brochure, organized into twenty chapters
treating on different phases of the game, presents a complete list of reference
works on basketball--including books, magazine and newspaper articles, doctors!
dissertations and motion picture films--numbering 379 in all,

EASTERN COLLEGE FIVES TO VIE FOR SILVER CUP

PHILADELPHIA, DEC, 17, AP--A silver cup has been presented to the Eastern
Intercollegiate League as a trophy for the league championship, a committee of
the Class of '28 of the University of Pennsylvania announced tonight,

The cup is in memory of the late Fugene J, Connell, who captained the 1928

Red and Blue championship quintet,
(continued on p.7 )